Singaporean fined record $600,000 for unauthorised dormitory accomodation
URA laws state that exclusive houses can only house as much as 6 unrelated individuals.
“Unauthorised dormitory lodgings not only detrimentally influences the residence character of the neighbourhood, yet also negatively impacts the residents, who may be from more at risk group of people that are vulnerable to profiteering,” claims Martin Tan, director, Development Control Group, URA.
More investigations discovered the fact that Tan had been providing dorm room rental at those properties for around 2 years, which he had actually changed 8 other private residential properties to unauthorised dorm room lodging between 2016 to 2018. The number of occupants in each unit ranged from seven to 23.
Following up on the MOM assessments, that took place in December 2017 and March 2018, URA’s investigations disclosed that 15 overseas people were staying in 1012B Upper Serangoon Roadway. One more 16 and 17 foreign workers were found to be staying in 32H Lorong 22 Geylang and 32J Lorong 22 Geylang, respectively.
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He includes: “URA is going to continue to take strong enforcement actions against wrongdoers, including property owners, renters, agents and anybody identified to have flouted URA’s guidelines on the rent or subletting of private properties”.
Enforcement police officers from the Ministry of Manpower had evaluated private homes linked to Tan and found that the number of residents staying there had actually drastically exceeded URA’s tenancy cap regulations.
URA says that Tan admitted that he understood the occupancy guidelines but decided to wage the illegal transformation of the premises anyway.
According to a URA news release on June 14, a 72-year-old Singaporean male, Tan Hock Keng, was convicted of three counts of converting exclusive properties to illegal dormitory rental. On May 30, he was fined a record $600,000, with the highest damages of $200,000 inflicted for each charge.