That last bit was discovered by mistake when he came by to the house at 4am a few years ago, honking away. He had turned up a day earlier than the appointed time for a trip to the airport.

At 63, he said he has to continue working, especially – and in spite – of the Covid-19 pandemic.

His daily income has fallen from RM200 a day to about RM50 today.

“Good thing it is my own taxi,” he quipped.

Lee pays a monthly rental of about RM144 for his two-room 600 sq ft public housing, or Projek Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) near Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, where he lives with his wife and two children.

He had plans to buy his own place about 20 years ago but not anymore. Surviving this pandemic has become a more important daily goal, he said.

Lee has been renting his low-cost unit for nearly 20 years. His children grew up in public housing.

Eighty-eight per cent of Lee’s PPR community are Malays, about 10% Indians with a handful of Chinese.

“All of us living here are trying our best to bring up our children, with the hope they will have a better life. That is our only goal. I used to make four trips or more to KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) or klia2, but I am lucky if I can make RM50 today,” he said.

Khairul, in his early 60s, lived in a PPR flat after he got married 30 years ago. He has moved several times now. He has a degree. More than 10 years ago, he quit the job he had held on to since graduation to open his own firm.

Like Lee, Khairul is also very likeable. Every few sentences is punctuated with a rambunctious laugh, his white teeth a deep contrast to his dark glasses. Khairul is blind.

While Khairul is lucky to upgrade several times and has his own house now, there are many living in public housing who remain there throughout their lives.

Meena, in her early 70s, is one such person. She lives on the 17th floor of a public housing next to a crematorium in Petaling Jaya. The air is forever smoky and the lift breaks down often.

A lot of the owners have rented out their units to foreigners and fearing for her daughter’s safety, she has asked the younger woman to move out to a safer place while she remains.

Meena part-times as a house help but that source of income has since dried up.

Meena and Lee are among many who have been left behind.

Khazanah Research Institute (KRI), which advocates raising the bar for affordable housing, has for many years, been researching the dire living conditions in Malaysia’s public housing and the desperate need for the government to step in and assume a bigger role in upgrading living conditions in public housing.

KRI’s report “Fixing a broken housing market” (released on May 4), said the structural issues in Malaysia’s housing market are deep and broad, but a pertinent salient feature in public housing or low-cost flats is that they are “unable to facilitate the ‘housing ladder’ phenomenon – where households transition from one type of house to another over the course of their life-cycle.”

Khairul, with his degree, made that transition, but not Lee or Meena. Both never went to school.

The report said “a well-functioning housing market” exists where most prospective buyers are able to afford to buy a house “irrespective of which segment of the income distribution they occupy”.

Education and housing are two separate issues but they are intertwined. The living conditions impact how children grow up. It is a cycle and often vicious.

KRI said the median price of the housing market should be three times the median gross annual household income.

Assuming Lee earns RM200 a day, that will be RM1,000 for a five-day working week, or RM4,000 a month. He should be able to buy a RM144,000 house (4,000x12x3).

Khazanah also urged the government to provide immediate relief for PPR residents and the urban poor after Covid-19 clusters popped up in public housing.

They live cheek by jowl in fire-hazardous conditions. Khairul started with a two-room unit.

He is fortunate he managed to move to bigger units. He has six children and armed with a degree, he is doing well today.

KRI’s survey also shows that about 4% of working household heads never went to school. Only 13% went beyond secondary level. Like Lee and Meena, without education, their work options are limited to low-pay jobs, or none at all, as when Covid-19 hit our shores.

In light of the current economic restrictions, many of them lost their jobs, KRI said.

KRI said that although the government has announced a few measures recently under the Pemulih stimulus package, they are lacking in terms of urgency, adequacy and reach.

For example, Bantuan Khas Covid-19 (BKC) will only be distributed in phases in August, November and December – meaning nothing for the full month of July, KRI said.

Moreover, the total amount is only up to RM1,300, a far cry from the average poverty line of RM2,208 per month.

Other measures are unlikely to reach the urban poor and PPR residents. This includes wage subsidies and Bantuan Kehilangan Pendapatan (BKP), which are only limited to those registered with EPF or Socso, something that is unlikely to be the case for many of the urban poor who work in the informal sector.

Better living conditions with larger units with at least three rooms, community space for the elderly and the young take the rut out of living.

Decent conducive housing gives hope and a much-needed leg-up economically for the next generation.

Which takes us to Kwasa Damansara in Sungai Buloh, a project by the EPF.

There is always a demand for decent public housing no matter what the economic cycle.

EPF’s initial aim to buy more than 2,000 acres of rubber land more than 10 years ago was to jumpstart affordable housing. Kwasa Damansara was planned to leverage on the Sungai Buloh-Kajang MRT line because access and transport is crucial to economic progress.

The initial plan was to provide quick access between the two destinations end-to-end with multiple stops in between to create job opportunities for those living in Kwasa Damansara.

Unfortunately, those initial noble plans seem to have been scuttled. The MRT line is up and running but no housing or commercial projects have commenced.

We have seen how the Covid-19 pandemic has ravaged lives and livelihoods of those living in public housing and low-cost flats.

Since development has yet to commence, maybe the way forward is to tweak the master plan and return to its original plan to build housing funded by the people, for the people.