September 6, 2016
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a personal and collective privilege to discuss in this august chamber the challenge of addressing the concern of millions of informal settler families in Metro Manila as well as in other highly urbanized parts of the country. Enshrined in our constitution is the right to decent homes for our people.
Under Section 9 Article 13, the State shall, by law, and for the common good, undertake, in cooperation with the private sector, a continuing program of urban land reform and housing which will make available at affordable cost, decent housing and basic services to under-privileged and homeless citizens in urban centers and resettlement areas. It shall also promote adequate employment opportunities to such citizens. In the implementation of such program the State shall respect the rights of small property owners.
The Constitution likewise guarantees the right of urban or rural poor dwellers not to be evicted nor their dwelling demolished, except in accordance with law and in a just and humane manner. No resettlement of urban or rural dwellers shall be undertaken without adequate consultation with them and the communities where they are to be relocated.
The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority in 2010 has estimated that there are already 2.8 million informal settlers—that’s 556,526 families—living in Metro Manila. Of this number, 104,219 families are occupying areas identified by the Department of the Interior and Local Government as danger zones. The city’s esteros—along with railroad tracks, garbage dumps, riverbanks, shorelines and other waterways—are classified as danger areas by the Urban Development and Housing Act (UDHA) of 1992, and are thus of great concern to the government, since informal settlers in these areas are most vulnerable to the disastrous impacts of floods and earthquakes, not to mention diseases such as malaria, leptospirosis, dengue and typhoid fever.
According to VP and HUDCC chairperson Leni Robredo, the number of informal settler families climbed to 2.2 million in 2015 from 1.5 million in 2011. From 2011 to 2015, housing backlog reached 5.7 million that poses a challenge to the new administration to build 2,602 homes a day for the next six years!
Mr. Speaker, most of the national government’s efforts up to this point have focused on off-city housing that has been found out to be ineffective or less than successful. The Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC)’s 2015 accomplishment report indicated 85.54 percent (73,723 housing units) were constructed “off-site,” while only 14.46 percent (12,464 units) were built in-city or near-city. Because the off-site houses were too far from current places of work or from any employment or livelihood opportunities, many informal settler families refused to occupy them, while others returned to Metro Manila to even less substantial housing opportunities.
The off-city resettlement projects done by NHA mostly are finished dwellings with no access to basic needs like electricity, potable water, schools, and health facilities. As those resettled do not vote in the resettlement sites, the LGUs sometimes are unwilling to provide them with these services as no additional funding are given the host LGUs. Many of these resettlement sites are far from the ISFs source of livelihood and employment opportunities thus many of them re-enter the cities again as ISFs.
Local autonomy countered weak national sanctions and this resulted in local officials non-compliance with requirements set to control forced evictions. DPWH and other national agencies’ projects were delayed due to their inability to move communities. Their lack of experience on relocation led to costly projects which beneficiaries found unacceptable.
Governance arrangements for resettlement are fragmented and with diffusing accountability. While NHA is tasked with housing production, there are no specific agencies assigned to be responsible for the socio-economic aspects of relocation - water, electricity, health, education, peace and order, and livelihood. Arrangements vary per resettlement site, often resulting to poor conditions. With so many agencies involved in relocation, roles and accountabilities of these agencies were not well defined. In the meantime floods and typhoons are coming that will again prove very disastrous and costly to us especially to the homeless poor.
Thus, VP Robredo has declared that she would suspend off-city resettlement programs. I fully agree with her on this policy, Mr. Speaker.
To pursue this policy, allow me to enumerate what are some of the ongoing programs for in-city, near-site and on-site housing has been undertaken.
People’s Plans for In-city Resettlement
One of the remedies enacted by the past Aquino administration has been called the “People’s Plan” under “Alternative Housing Program and People’s Proposal” as an offshoot of Typhoon Ondoy of 2009. The program allows informal settlers in Metro Manila’s danger areas to avail of in-city housing as an alternative to off-city relocation. Instead of seeing these informal settlers as the problem, why not look at them as the very same people who can help us solve the nagging problem of informal settlements?
Meanwhile the DILG is tasked with verifying the eligibility of the informal settler families requesting their own People's Plans, and the suitability of the land where they want their housing to be built. These proposals are then submitted to the Socialized Housing Finance Corporation through its High Density Plan that provides financing, land development and housing construction to put the People’s Plans in place covering some 31,762 ISFs. But sadly, the P50-B fund for relocating ISFs had been used up as reported by DBM thus SHFC could no longer finance such “people’s plans.” I think we should revisit this program and provide funds to SHFC to help the agency undertake programs for “people’s plans” as well as to expand and enhance its charter as the primary agency in-charge of in-city resettlement.
DILG-LGU Partnership in Socialized Housing
According to the report titled “Developing a National Informal Settlements Upgrading Strategy for the Philippines Project” —of HUDCC, the World Bank, the Cities Alliance and other partners—many LGUs have been unable to meet the demand for housing and basic services given their “accelerated pace.” For their part, many LGUs remain either hesitant or incapable of participating in socialized housing for informal settler families. Some LGUs complain of too many informal settler families in their areas, and that the shanties affect their cities’ planned central business districts, as illustrated in North Triangle, Quezon City. Some LGUs even express fears that accommodating in-city housing may serve as a precedent for other urban poor groups to make the same demands, further congesting their cities’ limited space. But without the LGUs’ full commitment, the report said, action on informal settlements “will continue to be a piecemeal venture, rather than an all-embracing strategic program.” While LGUs tend to say they have no more lands for socialized housing, oftentimes this is not true. RPT delinquent landowners and government-owned lands in their jurisdiction can be taken provided that the national government provides them the right incentive.
To address these concerns of LGUs, a DILG-LGU partnership for the Construction of Micro-Medium Rise Buildings was implemented. To jumpstart socialized housing for constituent informal settlers in danger areas, DILG offered financial assistance to LGUs in NCR to a total of P700-M for MMRBs for 2,857 informal settler families covering Parañaque, Manila, Quezon City, Las Pinas, Muntinlupa, Pasay, San Juan and Pandi Bulacan.
The financial assistance to LGUs is a one-time grant for the construction of the MMRBs with the LGU allocating at least 5,000 square meters of land for socialized housing. The ownership and use scheme can be either through a public rental system where the LGUs collect rentals from the resettled ISFs, co-management with the Homeowners Association/Cooperative, and or a payback scheme where the HOA takes out a loan from SHFC to repay the LGU so the latter can ‘revolve’ the grant given by the DILG.
For those that are poorer than most, other options are taken into consideration such as incremental self-help housing through micro-finance, riverfront re-development, resettlement within neighborhood that is not part of danger areas through re-blocking or rental housing. These schemes can be discussed and demonstrated through the Local Inter-Agency Committee on Housing or through their Local Housing Board with the assistance of DILG.
But presently Mr. Speaker, this engagement of the DILG has been terminated with no program funds allotted for this approach.
Public-Private Partnership in Socialized Housing
Under the PPP, private developers will be in charge of preparing the building plans, undertaking and financing the construction of socialized low-rise buildings, assisting the processing of housing loans for the informal settler family-beneficiaries, and organizing a condominium corporation for these housing projects. For this approach, we need to deal with the big condominium developers who should put their 20% socialized housing component to actual construction of in-city resettlements.
For its part, the government would subsidize the provision of in-city land that should be fully developed and buildable. Government agencies can then assist by recognizing the project as the developers’ compliance to the socialized housing requirement, setting a price ceiling for the socialized housing units, and extending affordable home loan values to the beneficiaries. For the concerned local government unit, its role would include the fast tracking of permits and providing property management for completed projects.
Socialized housing in itself is an enticing venture. We have several successful PPPs in QC, Bacoor in Cavite, and Valenzuela that can provide us with good templates. Because Bistekville 2 in Quezon city was a PPP, there was little market risk, it reflected the developer’s social responsibility, required minimal marketing and the target market, the informal settler families were provided not only with decent housing but livelihood options as well, making them a stronger market base and a more productive community.
In many cases modeled already by some privately initiated projects like UP-SURGE wherein communities were helped by NGOs, World Bank technical assistance, and some private sector participation, they demonstrated their capacity for self-help and affordability concerns were addressed through capacity building, application of new housing technologies that bring down costs of construction and other self-help activities.
Affordability will also depend on the capacity of families to earn, so if we do nothing about their livelihood and leave them as they are, affordability of MRBs may indeed continue as a problem, but we will not and we should not leave people as they are. Simultaneous with the housing program are various programs to build on their skills and education, raising their immediate and future potential for capacity to pay back government or private sector finance.
The way to respond to the problem of informal settlements is not to simply relocate them to far-flung areas, away from economic opportunities that are normally concentrated in the city.
Integrate in transport and livelihood hubs
Towards providing long-term solution to the problem of urban slum settlements is to integrate them in the urban landscape with provision of clean water, electricity, a safe environment, an integrated transport and livelihood hubs. By doing this we provide them access to a better, well-dignified life.
Building our mass transport system for NCR and outlying areas should highly consider housing as an integral component. Transport and housing policies can cause the poor to be pushed towards the peripheries for reasons of cost to government. These tend to make transport-related problems more severe, including loss of jobs or income from informal enterprises, increased travel time and costs and loss of community ties. Thus we have cities like Bacoor and Imus in Cavite, the SJDM and Sta. Maria towns in Bulacan and Rizal-Laguna lakeshore towns that have to be seen as in-city resettlement sites for mass housing and a source of labor pool.
Ways Forward
Mr. Speaker, the challenge of urbanization is here with us. Resettling our poor and making them active and productive citizens have to be undertaken based on the following policy thrusts:
1. Building safer, disaster resilient settlements for the Philippines’ urban communities of Metro Manila and urban centers where the LGU will be an active partner to provide suitable in-city relocation sites and cover cost of site development;
2. Institutionalize the role of the DILG to coordinate and anchor social preparation measures through its ISF-Project Management Office and the Office for Local Governments in the implementation of the UDHA, Disaster Risk Reduction and Management-Climate Change Adaptation, Risk Sensitive Land Use Planning, Socialized Housing Policy, and other relevant laws;
3. Institutionalize People’s Planning as a viable mechanism for moving low-income, disaster-prone, and danger zones located ISFs for in-city resettlement through an enhanced and well-funded Socialized Housing Finance Corporation as the primary housing agency;
4. Provision for a fund for a P100-B ISF Resettlment Fund for in-city resettlement to be leverage with the private sector and LGUs.
I hope that these policy thrusts can be considered by this august chamber and that having the power of the purse, Congress can provide light at the end of the tunnel for millions of our ISFs.
Thank you Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a personal and collective privilege to discuss in this august chamber the challenge of addressing the concern of millions of informal settler families in Metro Manila as well as in other highly urbanized parts of the country. Enshrined in our constitution is the right to decent homes for our people.
Under Section 9 Article 13, the State shall, by law, and for the common good, undertake, in cooperation with the private sector, a continuing program of urban land reform and housing which will make available at affordable cost, decent housing and basic services to under-privileged and homeless citizens in urban centers and resettlement areas. It shall also promote adequate employment opportunities to such citizens. In the implementation of such program the State shall respect the rights of small property owners.
The Constitution likewise guarantees the right of urban or rural poor dwellers not to be evicted nor their dwelling demolished, except in accordance with law and in a just and humane manner. No resettlement of urban or rural dwellers shall be undertaken without adequate consultation with them and the communities where they are to be relocated.
The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority in 2010 has estimated that there are already 2.8 million informal settlers—that’s 556,526 families—living in Metro Manila. Of this number, 104,219 families are occupying areas identified by the Department of the Interior and Local Government as danger zones. The city’s esteros—along with railroad tracks, garbage dumps, riverbanks, shorelines and other waterways—are classified as danger areas by the Urban Development and Housing Act (UDHA) of 1992, and are thus of great concern to the government, since informal settlers in these areas are most vulnerable to the disastrous impacts of floods and earthquakes, not to mention diseases such as malaria, leptospirosis, dengue and typhoid fever.
According to VP and HUDCC chairperson Leni Robredo, the number of informal settler families climbed to 2.2 million in 2015 from 1.5 million in 2011. From 2011 to 2015, housing backlog reached 5.7 million that poses a challenge to the new administration to build 2,602 homes a day for the next six years!
Mr. Speaker, most of the national government’s efforts up to this point have focused on off-city housing that has been found out to be ineffective or less than successful. The Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC)’s 2015 accomplishment report indicated 85.54 percent (73,723 housing units) were constructed “off-site,” while only 14.46 percent (12,464 units) were built in-city or near-city. Because the off-site houses were too far from current places of work or from any employment or livelihood opportunities, many informal settler families refused to occupy them, while others returned to Metro Manila to even less substantial housing opportunities.
The off-city resettlement projects done by NHA mostly are finished dwellings with no access to basic needs like electricity, potable water, schools, and health facilities. As those resettled do not vote in the resettlement sites, the LGUs sometimes are unwilling to provide them with these services as no additional funding are given the host LGUs. Many of these resettlement sites are far from the ISFs source of livelihood and employment opportunities thus many of them re-enter the cities again as ISFs.
Local autonomy countered weak national sanctions and this resulted in local officials non-compliance with requirements set to control forced evictions. DPWH and other national agencies’ projects were delayed due to their inability to move communities. Their lack of experience on relocation led to costly projects which beneficiaries found unacceptable.
Governance arrangements for resettlement are fragmented and with diffusing accountability. While NHA is tasked with housing production, there are no specific agencies assigned to be responsible for the socio-economic aspects of relocation - water, electricity, health, education, peace and order, and livelihood. Arrangements vary per resettlement site, often resulting to poor conditions. With so many agencies involved in relocation, roles and accountabilities of these agencies were not well defined. In the meantime floods and typhoons are coming that will again prove very disastrous and costly to us especially to the homeless poor.
Thus, VP Robredo has declared that she would suspend off-city resettlement programs. I fully agree with her on this policy, Mr. Speaker.
To pursue this policy, allow me to enumerate what are some of the ongoing programs for in-city, near-site and on-site housing has been undertaken.
People’s Plans for In-city Resettlement
One of the remedies enacted by the past Aquino administration has been called the “People’s Plan” under “Alternative Housing Program and People’s Proposal” as an offshoot of Typhoon Ondoy of 2009. The program allows informal settlers in Metro Manila’s danger areas to avail of in-city housing as an alternative to off-city relocation. Instead of seeing these informal settlers as the problem, why not look at them as the very same people who can help us solve the nagging problem of informal settlements?
Meanwhile the DILG is tasked with verifying the eligibility of the informal settler families requesting their own People's Plans, and the suitability of the land where they want their housing to be built. These proposals are then submitted to the Socialized Housing Finance Corporation through its High Density Plan that provides financing, land development and housing construction to put the People’s Plans in place covering some 31,762 ISFs. But sadly, the P50-B fund for relocating ISFs had been used up as reported by DBM thus SHFC could no longer finance such “people’s plans.” I think we should revisit this program and provide funds to SHFC to help the agency undertake programs for “people’s plans” as well as to expand and enhance its charter as the primary agency in-charge of in-city resettlement.
DILG-LGU Partnership in Socialized Housing
According to the report titled “Developing a National Informal Settlements Upgrading Strategy for the Philippines Project” —of HUDCC, the World Bank, the Cities Alliance and other partners—many LGUs have been unable to meet the demand for housing and basic services given their “accelerated pace.” For their part, many LGUs remain either hesitant or incapable of participating in socialized housing for informal settler families. Some LGUs complain of too many informal settler families in their areas, and that the shanties affect their cities’ planned central business districts, as illustrated in North Triangle, Quezon City. Some LGUs even express fears that accommodating in-city housing may serve as a precedent for other urban poor groups to make the same demands, further congesting their cities’ limited space. But without the LGUs’ full commitment, the report said, action on informal settlements “will continue to be a piecemeal venture, rather than an all-embracing strategic program.” While LGUs tend to say they have no more lands for socialized housing, oftentimes this is not true. RPT delinquent landowners and government-owned lands in their jurisdiction can be taken provided that the national government provides them the right incentive.
To address these concerns of LGUs, a DILG-LGU partnership for the Construction of Micro-Medium Rise Buildings was implemented. To jumpstart socialized housing for constituent informal settlers in danger areas, DILG offered financial assistance to LGUs in NCR to a total of P700-M for MMRBs for 2,857 informal settler families covering Parañaque, Manila, Quezon City, Las Pinas, Muntinlupa, Pasay, San Juan and Pandi Bulacan.
The financial assistance to LGUs is a one-time grant for the construction of the MMRBs with the LGU allocating at least 5,000 square meters of land for socialized housing. The ownership and use scheme can be either through a public rental system where the LGUs collect rentals from the resettled ISFs, co-management with the Homeowners Association/Cooperative, and or a payback scheme where the HOA takes out a loan from SHFC to repay the LGU so the latter can ‘revolve’ the grant given by the DILG.
For those that are poorer than most, other options are taken into consideration such as incremental self-help housing through micro-finance, riverfront re-development, resettlement within neighborhood that is not part of danger areas through re-blocking or rental housing. These schemes can be discussed and demonstrated through the Local Inter-Agency Committee on Housing or through their Local Housing Board with the assistance of DILG.
But presently Mr. Speaker, this engagement of the DILG has been terminated with no program funds allotted for this approach.
Public-Private Partnership in Socialized Housing
Under the PPP, private developers will be in charge of preparing the building plans, undertaking and financing the construction of socialized low-rise buildings, assisting the processing of housing loans for the informal settler family-beneficiaries, and organizing a condominium corporation for these housing projects. For this approach, we need to deal with the big condominium developers who should put their 20% socialized housing component to actual construction of in-city resettlements.
For its part, the government would subsidize the provision of in-city land that should be fully developed and buildable. Government agencies can then assist by recognizing the project as the developers’ compliance to the socialized housing requirement, setting a price ceiling for the socialized housing units, and extending affordable home loan values to the beneficiaries. For the concerned local government unit, its role would include the fast tracking of permits and providing property management for completed projects.
Socialized housing in itself is an enticing venture. We have several successful PPPs in QC, Bacoor in Cavite, and Valenzuela that can provide us with good templates. Because Bistekville 2 in Quezon city was a PPP, there was little market risk, it reflected the developer’s social responsibility, required minimal marketing and the target market, the informal settler families were provided not only with decent housing but livelihood options as well, making them a stronger market base and a more productive community.
In many cases modeled already by some privately initiated projects like UP-SURGE wherein communities were helped by NGOs, World Bank technical assistance, and some private sector participation, they demonstrated their capacity for self-help and affordability concerns were addressed through capacity building, application of new housing technologies that bring down costs of construction and other self-help activities.
Affordability will also depend on the capacity of families to earn, so if we do nothing about their livelihood and leave them as they are, affordability of MRBs may indeed continue as a problem, but we will not and we should not leave people as they are. Simultaneous with the housing program are various programs to build on their skills and education, raising their immediate and future potential for capacity to pay back government or private sector finance.
The way to respond to the problem of informal settlements is not to simply relocate them to far-flung areas, away from economic opportunities that are normally concentrated in the city.
Integrate in transport and livelihood hubs
Towards providing long-term solution to the problem of urban slum settlements is to integrate them in the urban landscape with provision of clean water, electricity, a safe environment, an integrated transport and livelihood hubs. By doing this we provide them access to a better, well-dignified life.
Building our mass transport system for NCR and outlying areas should highly consider housing as an integral component. Transport and housing policies can cause the poor to be pushed towards the peripheries for reasons of cost to government. These tend to make transport-related problems more severe, including loss of jobs or income from informal enterprises, increased travel time and costs and loss of community ties. Thus we have cities like Bacoor and Imus in Cavite, the SJDM and Sta. Maria towns in Bulacan and Rizal-Laguna lakeshore towns that have to be seen as in-city resettlement sites for mass housing and a source of labor pool.
Ways Forward
Mr. Speaker, the challenge of urbanization is here with us. Resettling our poor and making them active and productive citizens have to be undertaken based on the following policy thrusts:
1. Building safer, disaster resilient settlements for the Philippines’ urban communities of Metro Manila and urban centers where the LGU will be an active partner to provide suitable in-city relocation sites and cover cost of site development;
2. Institutionalize the role of the DILG to coordinate and anchor social preparation measures through its ISF-Project Management Office and the Office for Local Governments in the implementation of the UDHA, Disaster Risk Reduction and Management-Climate Change Adaptation, Risk Sensitive Land Use Planning, Socialized Housing Policy, and other relevant laws;
3. Institutionalize People’s Planning as a viable mechanism for moving low-income, disaster-prone, and danger zones located ISFs for in-city resettlement through an enhanced and well-funded Socialized Housing Finance Corporation as the primary housing agency;
4. Provision for a fund for a P100-B ISF Resettlment Fund for in-city resettlement to be leverage with the private sector and LGUs.
I hope that these policy thrusts can be considered by this august chamber and that having the power of the purse, Congress can provide light at the end of the tunnel for millions of our ISFs.
Thank you Mr. Speaker.
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