The triple-jump fish

Commentary
By Denis Murphy

  The fish in the frying pan began to worry as he felt the pan grow warm. When it was hot, he said to himself, “This is not a good place for me,” and, gathering his strength, jumped out of the pan and into the fire. He quickly realized the fire was also not a place for him. Again he gathered his strength—it was harder this time—and jumped from the fire all the way to the edge of the estero. “Now I’m safe,” he said. But the people there told him no one is allowed within three meters of the water, and both people and fish found that they would be sent to Calauan 100 kilometers away. The fish quickly made one last effort and landed in the refreshing waters of the estero, newly cleaned by the people living on the banks. They called him the “3-jump fish.”


This is a parable about the urban poor. Like the fish they tried to improve their lives by jumping—including the advocacy, lobbying, rallies and prayers that make change possible. First they struggled to “jump” from distant relocation to “in-city or near-city” relocation, where they would be near the jobs they had. This effort bore fruit in the “Covenant with the Urban Poor” in which President Aquino promised: “We will end illegal forced evictions. We will not allow any public or private authority to evict families and leave them homeless in the street. The government must provide decent relocation, near-city or in-city, if possible, quality housing, adequate basic services and jobs.”

Now poor people once threatened with eviction can build permanent homes along the esteros and rivers where they used to live in dangerous conditions. All is not well, of course. The fish went from the frying pan into the fire; the poor went from their old relatively cost-free lives into the middle-class world of high costs for land and construction. The poor can’t afford these costs, and neither, it seems, can society afford the huge subsidies necessary to house the poor in the city if land and construction costs remain as they are.

The least expensive unit in a five-story walkup building (called “medium-rise building”) is about P400,000. Poor families say they can pay about P500 a month. At that rate, setting aside interest rates, it will take the poor family 66 years to amortize the unit. And then there is the land cost. Even if the government manages to assemble the necessary subsidy funds for the urban poor, thousands of other families—teachers, policemen and soldiers, among them—will want the same subsidies. “What about us?” they’ll demand. Such a reaction is understandable. Less understandable is the negative reaction of many national and local officials to in-city relocation, and the age-old bias of the middle class against the poor.

The poor’s first jump was a step forward in many ways—it safeguarded jobs—but it was not the total solution. Where will they jump next? They will need to land in a place that has radically different land and construction policies. One example may be a policy requiring all government-owned or -controlled land that has lain idle for more than 10 years to be given to house the poor. There is a similar requirement in the 1992 Urban Development and Housing Act (Udha), but the turnover to the poor is left to the President’s discretion. A proposed amendment to Udha is that the turnover be automatic.

A good illustration of the usefulness of this policy is the dilemma involving 87 hectares of idle government-owned land in Quezon City, where thousands of poor families seek a small piece of land for their home. Mayor Herbert Bautista told a group of World Bank and Social Housing Finance Corp. people that he had tried to get this land for social housing, to no avail. The land is controlled by the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. Why can’t it be turned over to housing? Some 25,000 poor families will benefit.

The new site should also be covered by an effective expropriation policy that can expertly bring about deals, including land sharing, with government agencies and private owners, and go after idle land like a hungry lion looking for his dinner.

In the Covenant’s “in-city or near-city” relocation, the operative phrase may soon be “near-city.” For now the task is to provide concrete examples of in-city relocation so that it becomes a real alternative in all discussions and planning. Perhaps the next site for the poor is a place that interprets the phrase “near-city” in a very positive manner.

What about construction costs? A five-story walkup will still cost P400,000 per unit. Perhaps it is time to let the poor build their own homes under professional supervision. Starter homes can be built for as low as P20,000 per family. It is a solution that requires only marginally more land than a series of five-story walkups. Houses of one or two stories on a small piece of land are what the poor really want. The search for land must intensify.

An attempt at upgrading a poor community through starter homes is underway in Baseco, Manila.

After these two great leaps, the poor will be in decent housing near their work. Will they be happy? Not completely; after all, they are human. They need better jobs. Now they are scavengers, vendors, pedicab drivers, casual workers, unskilled construction workers. They want better retraining for themselves, better schools for their children, and better health services. They will want their own political party. They must, therefore, jump one more time into a society where they are treated fairly and where their voice is respected.

There is an Olympic athletic event called the triple jump: It consists of a hop, a skip and a jump. It is recommended for all groups of people, not only the urban poor. A good athlete can cover over 50 feet in such a leap. The world record holder is Jonathan Edwards of Britain, with a jump of 18.29 meters.

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

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Hopeful approaches to homelessness

Commentary
By: Gerald M. Nicolas
Philippine Daily Inquirer


“So there are also squatters in Korea?” an urban poor mother and leader sitting beside me quipped in Filipino while looking at photos of so-called “vinyl houses” being flashed on the screen. (Some 4,900 families evicted from various places in Seoul occupy vacant spaces without permission and build shelters made of vinyl, thus the name.) But instead of correcting her for using a politically incorrect term for people without security of tenure (the more acceptable term nowadays is “informal settlers”), I replied: “That’s because we don’t see them in Korean telenovelas.”

I wished that the 500 or so urban poor leaders inside the convention hall shared her candid realization upon seeing the pictures that spoke volumes of the global nature of the problem of land and tenure insecurity in cities. It had probably dawned on her that the 3 million Filipino families living in slums and without legal land or housing tenure, were not alone in waking up daily to the possibility of getting displaced and having their houses and lives destroyed. Had they known that close to 4.5 million people in the world were affected by evictions between 2007 and 2008 and that 55 percent of these happened in Asia, according to the Center on Housing Rights and Evictions, they would have left the venue feeling more depressed and helpless than ever.

Or probably not.

Optimism was palpable inside the hall where community leaders from 12 countries in Asia—from Korea to Pakistan to Burma (Myanmar) to the Philippines—gathered for the launching of a regional assembly of people’s organizations called the Urban Poor Coalition Asia or UPCA. What was remarkable about the assembly was that despite the differences in mother tongues, the language of hope to address a shared issue—the threat of forced eviction—echoed loud and clear among “Asian friends.”

Listening to the reports (or reading the English phrases and sentences in their PowerPoint presentations), one could see the richness of experience of the urban poor, in devising and adopting different strategies and approaches in empowering themselves to resist forced evictions. In all the countries participating in the UPCA, community-level savings mobilization proved practical. In Thailand, for example, communities have compulsory savings of 200 baht per month per household (or only P10 per day). One citywide network was able to buy a parcel of land for soon-to-be evicted families “with our own fund” and a loan from the government and development organizations like the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights. The property is located very near the original community, ensuring proximity to factories and other employment opportunities in the city.

Advocating housing rights through coalition-building and networking is also an essential strategy for influencing policies and challenging practices by government. In Nepal, the city network that includes women and youth held dialogues with political parties and explained its agenda to the public through various media. As a result, local governments in the cities of Bharatpur and Biratnagar have given free land for housing and have allocated a budget for citywide upgrading projects. In the Philippines, networks such as the Urban Poor Alliance stepped up the anti-eviction advocacy by entering into a covenant with President Aquino in 2010. So far, the allocation of P10 billion per year for in-city medium-rise housing projects for informal settlers along waterways has been the most significant (but yet to be realized) milestone of this engagement with the national government.

In-depth, detailed and, at best, participatory research has also gained increased importance in designing the strategies employed by many organized urban poor to prevent forced evictions. Indonesian delegates reported the significant contribution of technical assistance provided by architects and engineers in determining the magnitude of informal housing along Ciliwung River in east Jakarta and in capacitating the affected families in studying flood mitigation measures. It also proved helpful in proposing low-cost housing designs in accordance with the aspirations of the communities. In Korea, the NGO Asia Bridge conducted surveys to help assess the general condition of vinyl-house settlements in Seoul and generated maps to locate potential areas for upgrading and propoor development.

Nothing in the reports claimed that a single strategy can address the problem of homelessness. It has been a combination of approaches complementing each other. A community organization cannot rely solely on savings generation without trying to compel government to open opportunities for grassroots participation in the land market and land use. Neither can anti-eviction mobilization activities provide a long-term solution to tenure insecurity without sufficient and community-managed resources for the social preparation of would-be affected families. Research is needed to find out specific principles that will guide advocacy regarding what constitutes an adequate and legally acceptable housing intervention. There can be more strategies depending on the context and shared values of people, and in the end, the different strategies aim to achieve the same goal: tenure security and housing for the poor. Hope springs from allowing people’s organizations to explore innovative ways for solving their issues, different opportunities for building partnerships, and alternative venues for working with other stakeholders, especially government.

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