CDAC became one of the outreach agencies for the Home Ownership Plus Education (HOPE) Scheme under the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) from October 2006.

Home Ownership Plus Education is an assistance scheme to help young low income families get out of poverty trap by providing comprehensive and targeted forms of assistance. The scheme aims to enable low income families concentrate their limited resources on education and skills upgrading.

Eligibility Criteria

• Have a household* income of $1,500 or lower per month;
• Wife is of aged 35** years or below;
• Are married with 1 or 2 children;
• Either the husband or wife is a Singapore Citizen, and the spouse is either a Singapore Citizen or permanent resident of Singapore; and
• Husband is employed.

* For families where at least one spouse has post-secondary education, neither spouse should earn more than $1,000 each.

** For families where at least one spouse has post-secondary qualification, the wife must be aged 30-35 years old.

Each HOPE family will receive the following benefits:

• An Education Bursary for each child from pre-school up to University level education, including special education. It ranges from $250 to $2,000 per annum per child;
• A Conditional Housing Grant of up to a total of $50,000, paid into the wife¡¯s CPF Account in yearly installments of $2,500;
• A training grant of up to $5,000 for each spouse to pay for the cost of skills training/development programmes;
• A one-off cash grant of $1,000 to help the family offset utilities bills;
• Cash incentives of $6,000 to $9,000 for family planning.