UPALL Consultation on Flood Management Master Plan

Urban Poor Associates

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

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

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Attention: News Editor, News Desk, Reporters and Photojournalist

MEDIA ADVISORY

As urban poor people celebrate World Habitat Month, Urban Poor Alliance (UP All) will organize a forum on the new government flood control master plan. It will take place on October 9, Tuesday 9:00AM-5:00PM at the Audio Visual Room of the Social Development Complex, Ateneo De Manila University Campus.

The flood control master plan will be one of the most expensive public works of the administration. The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) identified a total of 735,000 informal settlers who will be affected by the project.

The forum will be attended by  five groups—government officials headed by the DPWH who will explain the plan and international aid groups; professionals in housing and urban planning , urban poor leaders; and NGOs working with  the urban poor will ask questions about the plan and make suggestions.

The forum aims to help people learn from one another and widen understanding of the problems—social, economic and political—that are inevitable in a project of such magnitude. It will also seek meaningful solutions or approaches possible in a win-win context. The meeting will issue a joint statement.

Date: October 9, 2012 (Tuesday)

Time: 9:00AM-5:00PM

Venue: Audio Visual Room of the Social Development Complex, Ateneo De Manila University Campus.

Please Cover.

Rehabilitating riverside settlements

Inquirer Opinion / Columns

Commentary : Rehabilitating riverside settlements

By Anna Marie Karaos
Institute On Church And Social Issues
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: December 29, 2009

THREE months after storm “Ondoy” wreaked havoc on Metro Manila, a workable solution has yet to be found for rehabilitating the riverside settlements whose inhabitants suffered the brunt of the floods. The only solution government has put forward so far is to prohibit the informal settlers from returning to their riverside residences and to accelerate the construction of off-city resettlement sites.

But informal settlers have re-established themselves in the river easements in the absence of alternative places where Metro Manila’s workers can find affordable housing close to their sources of jobs and livelihood. Why does government insist on relying on a tired, ineffectual policy? How rational can it be to do same thing over and over again and expect a different result?

Urban planners claim that Manila lost a golden opportunity to re-plan and rebuild itself after the city was destroyed during World War II. The danger of missing on another opportunity to put things right looms again if public authorities fail to come up with new land policies and redevelopment approaches in response to the wake-up call delivered by Ondoy.

How we frame the problem determines what solutions we will find and where we will look for them. If the problem is simply understood as how and where to provide permanent housing for the 80,000 families living on the easements of Metro Manila’s rivers and waterways, resettlement would seem logical. However, urban poverty specialists contend that the real problem is how to preserve the fragile access poor people have to the advantages offered by cities, principally jobs and services essential for survival and upward mobility like health and education. They argue that living in cities is the best self-help strategy poor people have devised to overcome poverty and therefore government policies should be designed in ways that would protect poor people’s access to the benefits of living in cities.

If we accept that the old solution does not work, and by this I mean specifically large-scale off-city resettlement, shouldn’t we begin thinking differently about the “problem” of informal settlements?

As a start, I propose two new ways of thinking.

My first proposition is that finding a solution to rehabilitating the riverside communities cannot be divorced from a city-wide, even nation-wide, reform of urban land policy. We should begin to think not just land use or land management but land governance. Land governance is about linking decisions on the allocation and use of land to social needs and political processes. Land is a finite and social resource that should be harnessed to meet social needs and purposes. Determining what these needs and purposes are involves a political process. If we claim we are a democracy, this political process needs to be inclusive. Decision-making on land uses and what social needs to prioritize must be inclusive both in process and in outcome. When more than half a million Metro Manila families live in slums or informal settlements without legal tenure and 80,000 of them have to live on river easements, there is no land governance. Governance has clearly failed to be inclusive in its outcome.

How does government plan to use the land resources that it still controls? What land laws and policies would be needed to channel private and public land to socially desirable uses? Are these questions being asked at all? Cities are densifying and land prices keep rising. The distribution of urban space will increasingly become more inequitable. Is anyone paying any attention to this problematic scenario? What tenure systems should we encourage to make housing affordable to the greater number of urban residents? Should we insist on the disposition of lands through titling of individual plots? Or can other tenure systems be promoted such as community land trusts, land use rights, rental housing, community leases and usufruct arrangements on private and government-owned lands? These tenure systems have the advantage of providing legal access to land without a heavy financial burden on poor users. The key is giving poor people legal access to urban space, not providing land titles.

What about multi-story housing for urban poor residents? A poor country like Sri Lanka has made it work through land sharing and cross-subsidy schemes.

My second proposition is that poor people are the best resource for finding a solution to making riverside rehabilitation sustainable. In Surabaya and Bangkok, the development of riverside settlements was negotiated successfully by the informal dwellers with their city governments. Official policy shifted from resettlement to redevelopment through the organization of the riverside communities which made a commitment and a plan to upgrade their homes, clear space for riverside roads, install septic tanks and keep the rivers clean. The government took responsibility for building the roads, dredging the rivers and collecting the accumulated waste from the riverbeds. Many riverside communities in Metro Manila have capable organizations which can easily replicate this strategy with the support of their local governments.

We would do well to heed the call of Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, who said in a recent pastoral letter: “It is not enough to simply order people off the waterways. A deep restructuring of our society is called for, starting in the present crisis with urban land policy.” The Manila archbishop presented concrete proposals, including urban land reform, a follow-through on presidential land proclamations, taxation of idle lands and a moratorium on eviction for as long as humane and adequate relocation cannot be provided. He reminded us, in the words of the psalmist, that “unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20091229-244576/Rehabilitating-riverside-settlements

©Copyright 2001-2009 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company

PASTORAL LETTER ON URBAN PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT POLICIES

PASTORAL LETTER ON URBAN PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT POLICIES

Unless the lord builds the house, those who build it labor
in pain. (PS 127, 1)

After the terrible destructions brought about by typhoon Ondoy in our metropolis, we now embark in rebuilding our lives and our cities. Life must go on. We must move on. We move now to the arduous work of rehabilitation. Let us do this not haphazardly and superficially so that we rebuild on firm foundations and the sufferings of others may not be aggravated. Let us allow ourselves to be guided by the Lord and his teachings.

On October 9, Aling Myrna and her teen-age son, residents of a community living in North Fairview, were shot to death by a private security guard as they protested the location of a fence being put up to keep them and their community “out of danger!”

Why do the thousands of people, people like Aling Myrna, cling to their homesites even in danger areas, and resist relocation to safer sites outside the city? The answer is simple. Their sources of livelihood are in the city, and there are none in far-away relocation areas. Commuting to the city from these areas would take many hours each day and would cost a very substantial part of a day’s income. Better the risks of life as an informal settler in a danger zone, they argue, than death by starvation in nice houses far away.

These, be it noted, are the people who keep the city humming. They are mainly market vendors and small tradespeople, bus and taxi drivers, washwomen and house help, janitors and construction workers, even policemen, firemen and public school teachers. They do not beg in the streets or steal food. Without them the city would come to a halt. Yet there is no legal place for them in the city.

Pope John Paul II in his encyclical “Centesimus Annus” (no. 43) is sharp and to the point on this matter.

“The obligation to earn one’s bread by the sweat of one’s brow also presumes the right to do so. A society in which this right is systematically denied, in which economic policies do not allow workers to reach satisfactory levels of employment, cannot be justified from an ethical point of view, nor can that society attain social peace.”

Behind the killing of Aling Myrna and her son lies a whole “structure of sin,”: land values which are far beyond the reach of our poor and many of the middle class, low taxes on unused land, the use of vast amounts of land for shopping malls, for upscale residential subdivisions and golf courses.

The term “structure of sin” tells us that the evil is pervasive, built into the structures of our society, something of which we are all a part. If the construction workers who build our homes and offices received wages sufficient for legal income, those homes and houses would cost far more than they do. Our newspapers would cost far more if the scavengers in Payatas who collect old paper for recycling were able to live away from the garbage and filth. Indeed, practically all that we buy or the services we use bear the mark of this sin.

It is not enough then, to simply order people off the waterways. A deep restructuring of our society is called for, starting in the present crisis with urban and land policy. To this effort of restructuring, we, the Archbishop and Bishops of Metro Manila pledge our full support. Hence we call for:

1. Urban land reform so that the poor may have the possibility to have security of tenure in our cities where their livelihood is found.


2. A moratorium on demolition of the dwellings of the poor if there is no humane relocation for them as our present laws require. Humane relocation would include accessible places of work for them.


3. A follow through of the processes to allot public lands to the poor in the areas that have been given to them by presidential declarations. Let the public lands declared by the President be developed and effectively be made available to the poor.


4. Legislations to raise taxes on properties that are idle, or to altogether expropriate them. The right to private property should not be given priority but the common good.

“Christian tradition has never recognized the right to property as absolute and untouchable. The right to private property is subordinate to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone. Private property is in its essence only an instrument for respecting the principle of the universal destination of goods; in the final analysis, therefore, it is not an end but a means.” (Compendium on the Social Teachings of the Church #177)

5. The swift implementations of the Clean Air Act and other environmental laws by disallowing heavy and highly pollutive industries within our cities which are densely residential and commercial. The zoning ordinances of the cities should be reviewed. Heavy industries, and not the poor should be relocated outside of our cities. If this is done, more people will move out of our cities to work in these industries.

6. In re-settling the poor and rehabilitating our cities priority should be given to the employment of the people. Informal settlers have grown in number because of lack of employment possibilities in places outside the metropolis. The “squatting” problem is not primarily a problem of housing; it is a problem of employment.

7. Let us not blame the poor in the waterways for the flooding of our cities. Let us look beyond: the unabated logging in Sierra Madre and Mt. Banahaw, mining ventures in our mountains, haphazard collection and unplanned disposal of our garbage, irresponsible city planning and development of subdivisions, just to name a few. Together let us take a hard look at our present practices and have the political will to reform them. In truth we can say that the government officials and the rich have more to do with the destruction of our environment that aggravated the recent flood than the poor!

There are many cries for reform as we experienced the unprecedented calamities of our times. We join our voices as your pastors in this call but we call for much deeper reforms that would really address and better the situation of our cities. Only when the needs of the least in our society are addressed will our society achieve true and lasting development.

Let us not lose courage. Let is heed the voice of God in the recent events. God is telling us something. We have experienced the bayanihan and damayan spirit in a remarkable degree these few weeks. This tells us that if we want to, we can work together and be concerned even to the point of sacrifice. Let us then continue to work together and be concerned to reform our ways that the environment be respected and protected and the poor be given deeper consideration so that they too may have a more generous part in the development of our cities.



Your pastors in the Lord Jesus Christ.

+ GAUDENCIO B. CARDINAL ROSALES, D.D.
Archbishop of Manila

+ BERNARDINO C. CORTEZ, D.D.
Auxiliary Bishop of Manila

http://www.rcam.org/Homilies/2009/cardinal_rosales/pastoral_letter_on_urban_planning_and_development_policies.html

+ BRODERICK S. PABILLO
Auxiliary Bishop of Manila