Tight quarters, ticking clock: Local animal shelters face expiring tenancies – again

CAUSES for Animals (Singapore), a local animal welfare group, used to occupy a plot of farmland the size of a basketball court in Seletar.

In 2019, the National Parks Board told the group that it could use the space for just two years more. The area around its farmland plot was up for redevelopment, so the group could choose to be relocated to Sungei Tengah in 2021.

Causes for Animals agreed to move. The catch was that the new digs were just a little over half the size of its old place – a concrete cube of space, in sharp contrast to the sprawling greenery around its previous home. As its fundraising coordinator, Christine Bernadette, puts it: “It was like you went from a landed property to a studio apartment.”