By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz & Catherine N. Pillas
Second of four parts
People feel safe and comfortable when they are inside their own homes. Definitely, no one can dispute these words of the chairman of the House Committee on Housing and Urban Development, Rep. Alfredo Benitez of Negros Occidental.
“It [having your own house] is the sense of security; it is something that every Filipino looks forward to,” he said. “But the question [now] is, ‘Is having your own house a privilege or a right?’”
This is the same question that Filipinos belonging to some 5.5 million households are probably asking themselves nowadays. To them, the third component of the basic needs—food, clothing and shelter—is probably missing.
In the Philippines the rapid increase in urban population produces an enormous demand for shelter.
Estimates given by Benitez and Noel “Toti” M. Cariño, vice president of the Chamber of Real Estate and Builders’ Association (Creba), put the country’s housing backlog at 5.5 million units. This figure, however, needs further verification, particularly since there is still no official definition of “housing backlog.”
According to Benitez, several people from rural areas go to different cities because of one reason—they are looking for job opportunities.
Because people need to live in areas where they have better opportunities, Benitez said it becomes a method for most of them to occupy idle lands that are either owned by the government or the private sector.
“If the government will only give them better opportunities [in the countryside] like it is giving to the people in the urban areas, they will choose to stay where they are,” Benitez said.
According to Benitez, the income in urban areas is two to three times higher than in rural areas, so rural folk migrate to cities to search for a job.
The Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) said workers in Metro Manila receive P446 (basic wage P426 + cost of living allowance P20) as their minimum wage.
For the head of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), Vice President Jejomar C. Binay, urban migration is a national issue that the government should address.
“I see that urban migration is not only a problem in the capital but also in all economic centers of several
provinces,” he said.
According to Binay the increasing number of informal settlers will not be resolved until the government has found the answer to urban migration.
“The solution to urban migration is the development of our provinces, which can provide better job opportunities to their people,” he said.
Binay said almost half of the country’s population already live in the urban areas, “and because of this it is expected to further increase the [number of] informal settlers in the next decade.”
The Vice President said the government’s housing programs should also focus on far-flung areas and not only on the highly urbanized area.
Moreover, the Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights) said the proliferation of slums in Philippine cities is seen as a coping mechanism for urban dwellers with incomes that are too fragile to afford land ownership.
It said slum areas are often blighted, overcrowded and lacking standard conveniences, such as electricity, water, drainage and health services.
“These settlements are usually located in high-risk areas, such as flood-prone embankment, waterways, railroad tracks, under bridges and beside dumps. But shantytown dwellers endure these unsanitary and dangerous conditions to be close to their sources of income,” PhilRights added.
Housing framework
Meanwhile, the National Urban Development and Housing Framework (NUDHF) for 2009-2016 finds the housing problem to be serious and is a largely urban phenomenon.
It said that by 2050, some 117 million Filipinos will be urban dwellers, translating to six out of 10 Filipinos living in urban areas. The NUDHF was published in 2009 by the HUDCC and the Philippine Institute for Developmental Studies, with the assistance of the United Nations Development Program.
“Beyond the public sector providing housing and the auxiliary services, new approaches are needed in the face of continuing rural-urban migration that is bound to exacerbate the housing problem.
The affordability of, and access to, government housing programs by the poor will also continue to pose a major challenge in the near future,” the NUDHF said.
Besides Metro Manila, it added that the other areas that have high levels of urban populations are Regions 3, 4 , 7, 10 and 11.
Problematic price cap
Creba’s Cariño said there is a mandated price cap for socialized housing units that is difficult to meet, thus forcing developers to look for cheaper land away from the Metro, making the projects less appealing to informal settlers in Metro Manila.
Socialized housing has a price cap of P450,000 set by the HUDCC and the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda). The current ceiling of P 450,000 for socialized housing is already a product of public-private concession, as Creba initially wanted P480,000.
Before the request of Creba for the adjustment, developers were hard-pressed to meet the previous ceiling of P400,000, considering the rising cost of construction materials, the raw price of land and hefty real property taxes.
The adjustment of the price ceiling for developers would mean more opportunities to serve the low-income market by adjusting the coverage of housing packages accorded with all incentives and privileges given by the government, without having to sacrifice the quality of the projects.
The difficulty in convincing HUDCC and the Neda to increase the price ceilings has, over the years, discouraged private developers from venturing into socialized housing, as the stringent cap forces them to decrease the quality of materials and opt for cheaper land away from the metropolis.
Socialized condominium
On top of the slow adjustment on price ceilings, a new proposal of Creba to fill the gap on socialized housing—in the form of vertical socialized housing projects, or what it calls the socialized medium-rise residential buildings (MRBs)—has also been stalled.
While the HUDCC and the Neda approved the price-ceiling adjustment on house and house and lots, they did not recognize condominiums as alternative means of compliance to the balanced-housing requirement, citing the limited wording of Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992, known as Republic Act (RA) 7279.
As such, they deferred putting a price ceiling on the MRBs since they have been found to be outside the coverage of RA 7279.
The proposal for MRBs was put forward to address what Cariño said was the problem of informal settlers finding the current sites of socialized housing as too far from their workplace. Creba proposes that MRBs will only be located in urban areas to place the lower-income populace closer to their work.
This has been pushed by Creba as an alternative means of compliance to the 20-percent requirement under the balanced-housing provision and, thus, an expansion of the socialized housing coverage in RA 7279.
The proposed scheme, however, must be coupled with the relaxation of the 20-percent requirement for the socialized condominiums.
Demolition
Meanwhile, the group Demolition Watch said demolition of illegal settlers’ houses in the country always ends up in violence.
The group said violent demolition runs counter to the commitment of the Philippine government to respect and fulfill the rights of its people, as enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
“The government should refrain from conducting evictions and demolitions and all forms of inhumane treatment. Instead, it should implement programs that uplift the lives of the people,” the group said.
Demolition Watch is an initiative and network of various community-based organizations, sectors including women, youth, professionals and the church, individuals and personalities deeply concerned with the massive dislocation of families in Metro Manila due to the ongoing and impending implementation of the government’s privatization and infrastructure projects.
Moreover, according to Benitez, people resist demolition because they were not given an alternative and acceptable solution. “In other words, demolition become bloody when there is no acceptable alternative for them, which should be provided by the government,” he said.
Benitez also said it is a wrong policy to remove informal settlers in the site.
“These people [informal settlers] are actually part and parcel of the city development, or the cities’ urbanization…it is a wrong policy to move them out of the city. A right engineering solution will solve the problem,” he said.
Benitez said most of the informal setters are living in danger areas because the government has no clear policy and did not provide land for them.
“Nobody wants to live in slum areas, let’s give them a chance to get out from their predicament . . .[but] right now we’re not doing anything to arrest the problem,” he added.
Benitez said they are looking at institutionalizing on-site and in-city resettlements only.
“We do not believe that the first option should be relocation. The informal settlers are in the Metro precisely because their jobs are here. We should account for additional costs to them such as transportation,” he said.
To be continued
Image credits: Nonie Reyes