| Dials | Where each rent band sits against NEA's three rent figures, read as one range: about $1,250 a month (the median rent of NEA's tendered stalls, and the median market rent NEA's valuers last gave Parliament); $1,450 (the 2025 median at centres like the operator-run ones); and $1,800 (the 2023 median winning bid) (the Plan, §1.3, D.14). How many centres run the pilot: three, the two Lighthouses and Tekka, and five at most before the gate (the Plan, §6.3, the Budget Book, B.7). Which centres: any of the 123 government centres, taken in order of how many heritage-worthy stalls they are expected to hold (first estimated in Year 0, then counted from the Regulars' List), so that every community's cooking is covered; Geylang Serai is included from the start (the Plan, §6.3). Beside the rent, the table-cleaning fee subsidy: $200 a month at the pilot centres, paid by the Government as the main landlord and tested by re-tendering the centres' cleaning contracts; it lets a stall pay $200 more rent, dollar for dollar (D.14). |
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| What breaks first | Livability. A fair rent is not yet a livable one: even Band B's $1,150 a month is above $610, the rent above which a typical tendered hawker earns less than his assistant (D.14; D.4.1). The cost grows as each year's entrants join, by about $1.0M a year (D.7.1). |
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| Where it works | Only where the state is the landlord. Rent bands are an almost pure transfer from the state as landlord to the new entrant, leverage 0.83 (D.7.1). Where a market sets the rent, support should be attached to the person (D.1, D.7.2). |
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| Fallback | The pilot's only cost to the Government is the extra rent that tenders at the pilot centres might have raised: small, capped and known in advance (D.14, the Budget Book, B.7). |
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| The fee subsidy's cost | What it is. A Government subsidy towards a contractor's price, not rent a landlord gives up. It follows NEA's temporary $200 a month support (September 2026 to February 2027) at the pilot centres. · Who runs the re-tender. In 2021 the Minister said "We do not anticipate any reduction in cleaning costs to stallholders" after tray return; the pilot tests that by re-tendering the cleaning contracts for the work left after tray return, and any saving the new contracts find comes off the subsidy. The re-tender is run by whoever holds the contract: at a Town Council centre, such as Chinatown Complex or Tekka, the hawkers' association manages table cleaning for the stallholders (NEA tender notices, 2022 and 2024), with NEA convening. · Why the saving may be nil. Fees there were flat before GST from 2022 to 2024 while the cleaners' Progressive Wage rose by a third, so the saving may be nil. At an operator-run centre the operator only passes the fee on and may not profit from it, so any saving there comes from re-pricing the contract, not from the operator's share. · What it costs. At the three pilot centres, 408 stalls in all, it costs up to about $0.98M a year, $1.63M at five. Nationally, a later decision once the evaluator has shown its effect, it would be up to about $16.6M a year across the 6,900 stalls in public centres (D.14, the Budget Book, B.7; D.7.4). |
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