LETTER | The Selangor state government is considering raising rental rates at PPR Lembah Subang 1, Petaling Jaya, from the current RM124 per month following the handover of its management to Perumahan dan Hartanah Selangor Sdn Bhd (PHSSB).

PSM condemns this move outright. Before any exco member endorses it, we urge them to first read Think City’s newly released report.

The report found that 77.3 percent of Lembah Subang 1 residents said their quality of life had declined or not improved since Covid-19: the worst figure among all 10 sites surveyed.

At the time of the study, only eight out of 23 lifts in the complex were working. When lifts break down, residents pay more for everything: gas cylinder prices reportedly rise from RM28 to RM50, while food and grocery delivery costs also increase.

The report is explicit: public housing residents “are disproportionately affected because of structural and systemic factors that intensify their financial pressures”. Raising the rent on top of this is a compounding burden.

The Think City report also demolishes the financial argument for the hike. It confirms that the RM124 rent does not cover basic maintenance costs (estimated at RM250–RM300 per month), but crucially, it also shows that higher rent collection does not improve livability.

One site with a 95 percent collection rate still recorded 75.9 percent of households reporting worsened or unchanged stress levels. The gap between income and expenditure is a governance and funding failure, not a problem caused by residents paying too little.

The same residents at Lembah Subang 1, when given a seed grant of just RM500 per floor, collectively raised 20 times that amount to transform their lift lobbies. These people are not the problem.

The PPR programme exists to give the poorest Malaysians, the B40, access to decent housing they can afford. Real wages have fallen threefold over 40 years. The minimum wage of RM1,700 remains far below Bank Negara’s RM2,700 living wage benchmark.

The Pakatan Harapan-led government runs both Selangor and the federal government, yet has still not introduced wealth taxes, inheritance taxes or capital gains taxes on listed shares. It is far easier, it seems, to extract a few extra ringgit from PPR residents than to tax those who can genuinely afford to pay.

Petaling Jaya PSM demands that the Selangor government immediately drop any plans to raise PPR rents. Fund maintenance properly through public allocation.

Tax the wealthy. Stop making the poor pay for a crisis they did not create.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.