A storm surge of suggestions

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

These days, President Aquino faces a storm surge of suggestions on how to run the government’s reconstruction program in the areas walloped by Supertyphoon “Yolanda.” The purpose of this piece (and of a roundtable on reconstruction matters to be held in mid-December) is to help the President and his assistants to sort through the suggestions pouring into their offices. Some are good; some are not so useful.

There are rules for the dangerous and demanding work of reconstruction. Lawyer Angel Ojastro of Naga City, who worked closely with the late Jesse Robredo, sent the following list of suggestions compiled by former US President Bill Clinton when he was the United Nations’ special envoy for tsunami recovery (2006). In the interest of space I have left out some suggestions and trimmed down some:

• Governments, donors, and aid agencies must recognize that families and communities drive their own recovery.

• Recovery must promote fairness and equity.

• Local governments must be empowered to manage recovery efforts.

• Good recovery planning and effective coordination depend on good information.

• The UN, World Bank, and other multilateral agencies must clarify their roles.

• From the start of recovery operations, governments and aid agencies must create the conditions for entrepreneurs to flourish.

• Good recovery must leave communities safer by reducing risks and building resilience.

My good friend, architect Jonathan James Price, sent me his own list. Price is now a consultant with the World Bank in Manila. He is English but is fortunately married to a Filipino, architect May Domingo. He has worked among poor people in a number of Asian countries. I have also left out from his list some suggestions and trimmed down others:

• If possible, people should be allowed to return to their previous locations and, with technical assistance, rebuild safer and better housing where they used to live. It is very easy to make blanket judgments about no-build zones, but mitigation measures should also be taken into consideration. People often end up losing their occupancy rights as well. “Building back better” is a nice catchy phrase, but it doesn’t always get done, especially when so many people are affected and resources including technical assistance, monitoring capacity, money and materials are limited.

• Relocation projects should not cram as many people as possible onto the sites, but consider livelihood very carefully in the planning—such as larger plots of land for backyard gardening or common facilities like workshops. If livelihood is not considered very carefully in the relocation sites, they will be a failure.

• It’s best to avoid transitional housing or bunk housing and move people straight into permanent housing. People end up staying in bunkhouses for far too long.

• Whenever possible, big international nongovernment organizations should partner with local NGOs, people’s organizations, and community-based organizations in rebuilding communities and replanning or planning new settlements. In so doing, they can strengthen local organization and capacity as well as make use of all that local knowledge.

Most of the suggestions in these two lists seek to ensure that ordinary citizens and their communities will be involved in the reconstruction process (the poor, especially, because they are so often ignored or ill-treated), and that they will be treated fairly and with equity (justly). Price’s suggestions focus on historic mistakes that were made in past reconstruction programs and can be made in the future.

To act as Clinton and Price suggest takes time. It is better, they recommend, to proceed slowly and thoughtfully than rush to judgment in these complex and controversial matters, such as the site of relocation areas. If the people feel poorly treated, the road ahead will be slow and maddeningly frustrating all around.

Price focuses on some of these recurring mistakes, such as choice of relocation areas, overcrowding, and lack of long-term perspective. At bottom, it seems that he and Clinton are asking for compassion, consultation, determination, learning from past mistakes, and thoughtful, widely accepted steps forward.

How does the government show its determination to rehouse the million-plus homeless families despite the problems? How will it enforce its decisions? How will it punish individuals who place their own economic good over the happiness of thousands of poor people? Does it need special powers from Congress—for example, stronger expropriation powers?

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

The road to a housing solution

Since the start of President Aquino’s administration, urban poor people have worked with then Secretary Jesse Robredo and later with Secretary Mar Roxas of the Department of the Interior and Local Government to come up with a housing plan acceptable to both the poor and the government.

An estimate of all this work is that never in Philippine history have so many meetings been held with so few concrete results. Another estimate admits the big number of meetings but says they were necessary to produce essential agreements that will guide work in the future. We are not yet there.

By Denis Murphy

Philippine Daily Inquirer

11:28 pm | Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

Let us look at one group’s understanding of what those essential agreements are. Different groups may have different insights. Here are three proposed by the Anti-Eviction Task Force: 1) Reliance is put on the one-story house and there is growing suspicion of the usefulness of five-story walkup buildings; 2) The value of near-city resettlement sites is clearer than ever, especially as a stopgap measure until the government is able to gather its forces and find land for the poor in the cities; and 3) The absolute importance of people’s participation in the planning of the houses they will occupy is recognized.

One-story houses. Poor people have lived in one-story homes for generations, and want to live that way in the future. They want to be able to walk out the front door into the sunlight. They want a tree planted by their door, where they can sit in the shade and watch the children play. Such an image—people sitting under their own vines or fig trees—is used in the Old Testament to describe life in God’s coming Kingdom. (Micah 5:4) Poor women want a vegetable or flower garden. Children want a dog in the house.

They can’t have any of these good things in a five-story walkup tenement. They also need a place to store their tricycles, carts, fishing gear. They want to be able to get out quickly if there is a fire.

When they have a little money, the poor build a second floor and work for a title, and then they feel they have something important to leave to their children when they die. This desire to leave something of value to their children is behind people’s longing for titles.

A home on the ground is also the only home most poor families can afford. A decent one can be built for P80,000-P100,000. They can afford to amortize this cost at about P300 a month if the government gives half of the total cost through a grant. If we raise the amount required for amortization, we are in danger of cutting into their other essential expenses for food, medicine, school and clothes.

A decent starter one-story house can be built for P30,000. On the other hand, the government and private builders say it costs P400,000-P500,000 to build a 20-square-meter unit in a five-story walkup. Even if the government gave a P200,000 grant, the family will still have to pay P900-P1,200 a month in amortization. Some families can do this, but at least an equal number of poor families can’t. Can a poor country with 4 million urban poor families in need of housing give subsidies of P200,000 or more to each family?

Five-story walkups allow for higher density than one-story housing. But the advantage of height comes in a big way if we talk of 15-, 20-, or 30-story buildings, as in Hong Kong. There is little advantage when we talk of five stories.

We asked architect Ronnie Manahan, former dean of the University of the Philippines College of Architecture, how many families can be comfortably housed in five-story buildings on one hectare of land. He said: “About 400 at most.” A bigger number will make people feel crowded, which works against good neighborliness. If we give families 25-sq-m lots and one-story housing, we can have 300 families on a hectare (300 x 25 sq m=7,500 sq m; the remaining 2,500 sq m are for roads, public services and playgrounds). The people can eventually build a second floor.

Another advantage of one-story houses is the people themselves can repair them. In five-story walkups repairs are difficult to make, require skilled workers, and cost a great deal of money.

Walkups in general have bad track records worldwide. A study by UN Habitat found that in six projects involving multistory buildings, four had poor results because of high costs and poor management (Urban Economics-Building Assets for the Urban Poor, 2009-2010). The Philippines has its own examples in the row of five-story buildings on R-10 road opposite Pier 18. They are so crowded and so carelessly managed, and have become such vertical slums it is no surprise they are due for demolition.

Near-city relocation. By “near-city” is meant resettlement areas outside the city but close enough for wage earners to commute to work. The Urban Poor Associates (UPA) helped 500 families relocate to San Pedro, Laguna, this year. They use the train to commute to work for P20 one way. UPA also helped 500 families relocate to Bocaue, Bulacan, where they spend P70 back and forth by bus. Some families have together bought a second-hand wagon, which is cheaper yet. The two areas are scenic, with rolling hills and trees, and children can play safely on the ground. Before, they played on the R-10 pier front road, inches from large cargo trucks, or around charcoal pits in Ulingan, Tondo.

In-city housing remains the best solution. Cities where rich and poor populations mix have the highest rates of social mobility, including rates of escape from poverty. The government has to find more idle land in the cities if it wants the best solution.

People’s participation. In the work with Secretaries Robredo and Roxas, the principle of people planning their housing has been central. The current emphasis on “people’s plans” grew out of those meetings. Poor people believe, quite sensibly, that their plans should be the start and guiding principle of their homes. I think all who took part in the meetings with the two men agree that people’s participation is of supreme importance.

The road to a housing solution is a long and bumpy one, but it has led to certain basic principles that are part of the final solution.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

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.