World Habitat – A Call for Decent Housing

 Urban Poor Associates

25-A Mabuhay Street, Brgy. Central, Q.C.          Telefax: 4264118          Tel.: 4264119 / 4267615

Ref:  Princess Asuncion      Mobile phone: 0908 1967450     http://urbanpoorassociates.blogspot.com/

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About five hundred urban poor assembled today in Anda Circle, Bonifacio drive at 5PM to celebrate world habitat month. The group with their colorful placards calling for decent housing marched to the Ninoy and Cory Aquino monument in Padre Burgos Street, Roxas Boulevard.

The Task Force Anti-Eviction composed of various people’s organizations and NGOs such as the Urban Poor Associates (UPA) and Community Organizers Multiversity (COM) said the Ninoy and Cory monument is a reminder to everyone to help the poorest of the poor of our country through mass actions to support a call for decent and affordable housing in the city.

TFAE together with the people held a small program at the monument. Some of them rendered songs and dances. At 7PM, 500 people all together lit the candles that brighten the night. They read a statement that encourages everyone to participate in promoting adequate housing a priority.

The group also prayed that the government help in the rehabilitation of the communities and to provide mass housing to the thousands victims of disasters in Bohol and arm conflicts in Zamboanga.

Jeorgie Tenolete, president of Kabalikat in Baseco, Tondo, said, “Our community in Baseco has been long proclaimed but without the help of civil society it would not be able to survive threats of demolition. We are asking the government to implement the Baseco Development Plan to show its sincerity.”

 

“We also asked our authorities to ensure that our brother and sisters who suffered from calamity and war may not just get aid but safe and affordable housing, Tenolete added”

UPA data shows that there are 100,000 families living on waterways that are threatened of eviction.

Liza Condino, COM community organizer of fisher folk in Laguna Lake said, “the government plans of building a dike-road around the lake has a good intention to avoid flooding in the lake side, but it will cause the relocation of 45,000 families in far areas.”

Condino reiterated that they do not oppose the flood control project but it is important the government involve the people in planning the project and to explain to them that a massive moving of people will do tremendous harm to families. She wants to secure that the families can decide their own future.

TFAE also demanded that the President hasten the implementation of the covenant he signed with the urban poor on March 6, 2010 at Del Pan Sports Complex.

Ricardo Narcilla, president of United Chrislam along the waterway of Estero De San Miguel, urged the President to fast track the four on-site housing projects in Estero De San Miguel, Quiapo and San Sebastian.

Narcilla added, “Our neighbors, about 88 families, were already demolished. We fear that we will also be evicted if the housing project will not be started within the year. We know that our president hands are full, but we needed him for the implementation of the project.”

TFAE is also lobbying for the House Bill No. 2791 filed by 16 congressmen lead by COOP-NATTCO Representative Cresente Paez. It seeks to amend several sections of UDHA to strengthen the protected right of every Filipino to a decent home, and provide sanctions upon those who violate the mandate of the law.

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Innovation needed in informal-settler housing

By: Anna Marie A. Karaos, John J. Carroll

2:58 am | Monday, March 19th, 2012

It takes more than presidential will and money to make a propoor initiative succeed. Apart from having an efficient and honest implementing bureaucracy that understands the purpose of the reform, innovation is a major ingredient of success. Without it, implementing institutions are bound to magnify what is wrong with the existing systems and make the problem worse. Innovation is the hallmark of reform.

Last year, President Aquino announced that his administration would allocate P10 billion every year until 2016 for the housing of informal settlers in so-called danger zones in Metro Manila. This initiative was a response to the advocacy of urban poor groups for a policy of in-city housing for urban informal settlers as an alternative to distant or off-city relocation. An estimated half a million families are expected to benefit from this initiative.

The size of the budget, P10 billion annually or P50 billion up to 2016, is explained by the high cost of in-city housing, especially since the administration prefers multistory housing so as to maximize the use of limited land. The urban poor, who previously had been instinctively averse to this type of housing design because of cost, safety and maintenance issues, have come to accept it as a reasonable solution.

Bolstering the urban poor’s confidence that the administration was ready for innovative housing approaches was the President’s appointment of Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, known for his propoor housing programs in Naga City, as the government official responsible for the program.

The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) organized and convened technical working groups and contracted consultants to come up with solutions to the tenure and housing problems of informal-settler communities. It recommended the in-city housing program and budget based on the technical studies and numerous consultations with affected communities.

Urban poor communities and their organizations celebrated the announcement of the in-city housing program, considered unprecedented because of the radical departure from the longstanding policy of off-city resettlement and the large budget being committed by the executive branch for its implementation. More than that, the money for the first year was swiftly released and is now lodged with the National Housing Authority (NHA).

Encouraged by the announcement of the P10-billion fund, urban poor groups, assisted by nongovernment organizations, started to identify prospective sites and beneficiary-communities and to formulate “people’s plans” for multistory housing. The Urban Poor Alliance even submitted to the DILG a proposed menu of tenure and institutional modalities for the program, consisting of community-initiated, local-government-initiated and NHA-initiated schemes. The idea was to mobilize as many project initiators and players as possible, not only to increase the scale and speed of program implementation but also, and more importantly, to encourage inventiveness, healthy competition and cost efficiency through a multiplicity of approaches.

In Brazil where nonconventional housing approaches have been tried with some success, large-scale public housing projects built by contractors that were making lots of money while compromising the quality of housing had been gradually replaced by community-built and -managed medium-rise residential buildings. In one such project in Sao Paolo, residents were responsible for allocating housing funds, sourcing and purchasing building materials, organizing themselves into committees and construction teams, and selecting the technical advisers to assist them. A combination of grants, subsidies and loans was provided. A certain percentage of the budget was allocated for community organization and social preparation.

A more modest scheme that can easily be applied here is providing loans to poor communities that already have land tenure to enable residents to build on their existing houses a second or third floor, which they can rent out to other poor families. There are similar schemes that can achieve the objective of providing in-city housing to informal settlers, not necessarily through ownership. The question is how open are the housing agencies to such innovations.

At a recent workshop attended by government agencies, guidelines and standards to be observed in accessing the P10-billion housing fund were reportedly discussed. It is usually a bad sign when regulations are made the first order of business when implementing a supposed reform program. Regulations, especially when turned into absolutes, as bureaucrats are wont to do, run the risk of stifling innovation. The first year should be a time of flexibility, experimentation and learning. As different project ideas are tested and experience is gained on what works better and what safeguards are needed, the agencies will have a better basis for formulating standards and guidelines.

When one considers the government-built housing units in the resettlement sites in Rodriguez (formerly Montalban), Laguna and Cavite, or the medium-rise residential buildings in Smokey Mountain and Vitas, built by contractors that supposedly passed NHA technical standards and bidding procedures, one cannot help but want alternatives. Would the same standards that gave us the badly built resettlement and medium-rise housing units be used for the P10-billion fund? It is understandable for agencies to rely on their tried and tested rules, even if everyone else can see that their outputs leave much to be desired. The best way to kill a reform initiative is to do things in the usual way.