Howe also fast-tracked the public housing programme while serving as the HDB's CEO under then-chairman Lim Kim San in the early years, solving the chronic housing shortage in the 1960s. He undertook the politically and technically arduous task of starting up Toa Payoh New Town, and faced organised opposition to the resettlement of Toa Payoh and the removal of squatters. As Chairman of PSA, now known as PSA Corporation, Howe went against the advice of professionals to build Singapore's first container terminal in the early 1970s.