Urban Poor NGO Appeal For Respect to Land Rights

Urban Poor Associates

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

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

** NEWS RELEASE *** NEWS RELEASE *** NEWS RELEASE *** NEWS RELEASE **

13 June 2014. Urban Poor Associates, (UPA) a housing rights advocate held a first forum on Urban Development and Housing Act (UDHA) or Republic Act 7279 to Yolanda survivors and International Organizations Friday 9 AM-12 Noon at the Grand Stand Session Hall, Sta. Cruz Street, Tacloban City. The forum is an appeal to respect land rights and to allow Yolanda survivors to have access to transitional housing in their existing places while in wait for the permanent housing. 

Atty. Ritche Esponilla, UPA Legal Counsel said, “The forum aims to provide understanding of UDHA / RA 7279 to ensure that the affected families will have an informed decision on their housing options.”

Celia Santos, UPA UDHA Advocacy Officer based in Tacloban said, “This is an effort to lessen the suffering of affected families living in tents by educating them on their land rights particularly on the right for an adequate consultation. Consultation does not happen in most disasters stricken areas based on Oxfam study.”

According to a recent Oxfam Briefing Paper on permanent relocation, 81 percent of the people interviewed “stated they are not aware of their rights regarding permanent relocation,” and only 7 percent of those interviewed said “they had been consulted by a government official at the barangay, municipal or national level about the relocation process.” (New and Old Wineskins by Denis Murphy, Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 29, 2014)

The forum supports:

1. Immediate implementation of the repair or rebuild on-site for transitional housing in affected areas.

2. Transitional housing for those who opted outside the affected areas.

3. Make public the correct land inventory per barangay so, that people can effectively participate in choosing housing and land options as mandated by the UDHA law or RA 7279.

4. Speed up the construction of permanent housing in safe areas with decent housing, basic services and available jobs.

5. In the meantime, put in place safe evacuation areas, identify evacuation areas per district if possible per Barangay, make a community drill on complete disaster preparedness program and to ensure that when disaster hit, there is an abundant food supplies for affected families. 

6. Respect everyone land rights.

Mary-Ann Guinoohan, a resident of Barangay 89, San Jose District, Tacloban said, “We are happy to be informed of our housing rights. This is the first time that someone explains to us that there is a law protecting poor people housing rights. We are hopeful that in the meantime, the government will give us transitional housing on the site especially that rainy season has started.”

The forum was supported by the Office of the Vice Governor, Commission on Human Rights, International Organization for Migration (IOM), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Community and Family Services International (CFSI).

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UPA presentation to LOCOA Meeting

This video is the presentation of Urban Poor Associates (UPA) to the Leaders and Organizers of Community Organization in Asia (LOCOA) meeting on May 24, 2014 at Surabaya, Indonesia. It summarizes UPA work since it began in 1992. 

Umbrella Walk for UDHA Amendment

Urban Poor Associates

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

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

** NEWS RELEASE *** NEWS RELEASE *** NEWS RELEASE *** NEWS RELEASE **

TFUA umbrella walk calling for UDHA Amendments at Congress.

05 May 2014. Task Force UDHA Amendments composed of Urban Poor Associates (UPA), Community Organizers Multiversity (COM), Partnership of Philippine Support Service Agencies Inc (Philssa), Peoples Alternative Study Center for Research and Education in Social Development (Pascres) and various people’s organizations from different cities gathered today in front of congres, senate and other places to push further their call to amend UDHA.

Urban poor groups brought with them umbrella labeled “Amend UDHA Now! Promote Housing Rights!” The mobilization is a peaceful rally reminding the legislatures that the poor are closely monitoring all developments under housing and urban development.

Celia Santos, UPA UDHA Advocacy Officer said, “Umbrella is a symbol of shelter for most of us. It keeps us dry from rain and keeps us from too much heat. Our urban poor advocates wanted a constant reminder that they are bent in pushing UDHA amendments and they thought that there is no other best way but to use their umbrellas labeled with phrases of support UDHA amendments. This umbrella is their walking advertisement to the public to join them with their endeavor.”

The proposed amendments filed by COOP NATCCO party list Rep. Cresente Paez and Camarines Sur Rep. Leonor Robredo House Bill 2791  and Senator Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino, Senate Bill 1874 will ensure that the rights of the poor for decent housing will be given a priority.

This bills aims to further secure the urban poor from eviction and demolition of their homes and from relocating them in distant places lacking basic services and livelihood opportunities, thus clarifying the definition of “resettlement areas” that it must be within and/or near city areas.  

It also calls for proper technical study and public consultation before declaring areas as danger zone/high risk area.

This measure will mandate government to set-up a Socialized Housing Commission with quasi-judicial power and authority with all issues arising from the implementation of UDHA law.

Marlon Quirante, President Exodus Homeowners Association , “For the past nine years that we have been pushing for the amendments, this is by far the most number of supports we had from the law makers. The implementation of on-site and near-city resettlement was also given priority. We are also hopeful that our people’s plan for on-site housing in Taytay, Binondo and Caloocan will be granted. We believe that through our proposed UDHA amendments we will secure that poverty alleviation and risk mitigation can be achieved by implementing socialized housings that agreeable among the government and poor people affected. 

Santos concluded, “We urge committees to continue to hold hearings as it move forward having the law amended.”

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Do we have to learn to live with slums?

Do we have to learn to live with slums? Watch Paul Mason's film from the Philippines in full
Manila, Philippines: The rich elite in cities across the world want to clear the slums which are now home to a billion people. But many of those who live in shanty towns like that which lines the banks of the San Miguel canal, do not want to leave. Why?

I had come to the Philippines to explore a theory but, as always, reality got in the way.

I was standing on the bridge over the Estero de San Miguel, a slum in the capital Manila.

My host was architect Felino Palafox and he had spread his blueprints across the parapet of the bridge and we were poring over them, with some street kids clambering around us. Palafox was making a big splash with the locals his Star Trek-style traditional Philippines shirt.

Find out more


Slums 101 will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 16 August 2011 at 20:00 BST
You can watch Paul's film for Newsnight in full on BBC Two that evening at 22:30 BST
More about Slums 101
More from Newsnight
The sweep of the slum was pretty horrible - a curve of water, shacks on both sides, multicoloured plastic rubbish inches deep in the water, and now and then the sound of something hitting the water as somebody used the "wrap and throw" method of sewage disposal into the Estero itself.

I needed the bathroom myself, so somebody guided me into a shop - a kiosk really - on the bridge. I clambered down a ladder and then, suddenly, I was in a place whose existence had not really occurred to me. Because if the slum is built right up to the waterway, on stilts, how do you get through it?

The answer was a tunnel. Four feet (1.2m) wide, about 5ft 7in (170cm) high (I learned this painfully as I am 5ft 7.5in (171.4cm)) and 600m (1968ft) long.

Twelve hundred families live off that tunnel - about 6,000 people. Such is the population density that I realised immediately what the women cradling their kids and swaying absentmindedly in the half light were doing - the same as me, waiting for the toilet.

Lack of hope
When I came out I was, as Dennis Murphy said to me afterwards, "stoked". Dennis is an ex-Jesuit priest who runs an NGO in Estero de San Miguel that has helped the slum-dwellers organise themselves.

"You were hyper, manic," he told me later.

That was because whenever you enter a slum your spirits do not so much droop as plummet. A fall, with a long "aargh" such as that emitted by the Wily Coyote when The Road Runner gets him to go over a cliff.


The Balderas family live in a single 8ft square room
You suddenly become aware physically - even though you have seen this stuff many times before - of that thing no modern human being wants, limitation, boundedness, a lack of hope.

After two minutes down the tunnel I stormed up the ladder and told my crew to stop filming Palafox. Nice though his scheme development plan was, it was on paper. Down in the tunnel was a reality that, despite being in Manila's slums for days, we had not properly seen.

Mena Cinco, the barangay captain - a kind of local councillor with the authority of a tribal chieftain - led me down again.

We met Rotsi and her family - mum, dad "a driver for a Chinese family", an unspecified family guest, a daughter doing her homework and a toddler. Five people in one-and-a-half rooms.

"We've been here 20 years," Rotsi told me.

Population explosion
Next door Oliver Balderas was snoozing with his kids, who were eating ice cream. There was a cartoon on the television and mum was also having a nap - it was about 32C and heavy with humidity.



Click to play

Why Philippines slum clearance is creating new problems
They came to the door. Mr Balderas is a construction worker earning about $3.50 (£2.13) a day. The family moved to Estero de San Miguel from a conflict area 10 years ago.

The room - about 8ft (2.4m) square, and like all of the Estero, built of wood and floored with lino - is their entire dwelling space.

Manila is undergoing a population explosion. Of the around 60 people-an-hour estimated to be arriving here, about half are coming as migrants from the collapsing agriculture sector, and half are born here - so there are kids everywhere.

These kids sing a song about the inevitability of poverty and their determination to overcome it.

Total rethink
With the sky glowering when I got out of the tunnel, I was no longer in any mood to go on giving the theory the benefit of the doubt.

My instant reaction was this: "There's a theory that says basically slums are here to stay, that they're cohesive, sustainable - green even.

"I can see the social cohesion bit, but as for green, well, (my nostrils flare at the river smell).

"And I can't help thinking the whole theory is a bit of a cop out because why - when in the 19th Century they cleared out places like this in one generation do we, in an era of globalisation, tolerate them?"


Mena Cinco is one of the slums' official leaders
If I came out of the Estero de San Miguel "stoked", it was because it challenged my trendy notions, learned from the 2003 UN Habitat report and interviews with various experts, and re-awakened the inner Edwardian-era social reform nostrums my grandparents taught me about slums, which is that they have to be cleared.

But then I went back into the San Miguel by night, with Mena still trying to educate me about the social cohesion, and I was forced to rethink it all again.

I met business graduates, found an internet cafe, met the volunteer police force and got offered the chance to eat a boiled egg with a chicken embryo. I said I would rather jump in the canal naked, and the local women invite me to do just that.

Then, over a beer with ex-Father Dennis, discussing our mutual experiences with the Salesians and the Jesuits, I discovered what one billion people on the planet have discovered - slums are not so bad.

They have changed from the Dickensian hell holes of our imagination. Through education and communications technology people are making life bearable for themselves - and of course providing the modern mega-city with an indispensable workforce of cheap labour.

The result is we have to confront a question that would have appalled the 19th Century pioneers of city design - do we have to live with slums forever?

I do not know the answer to that question - but I now understand the question.

Somewhere between the theories of the architects and NGOs and the rigid clearance doctrines of Prada-clad Filipino millionaires, and the night on the streets with the local cops and the day in the countryside with people whose main ambition in life is to live in a Manila slum… I have gone beyond the theory and experienced the reality.

Join Paul Mason on Tuesday 16 August at 20:00 BST on BBC Radio Four, on Newsnight at 22:30BST on BBC Two, and on BBC World TV's Our World slot on 26/27 August, and on the BBC World Service's One Planet on 19 and 26 August to experience it for yourself.

And for more background read Paul's New Statesman article here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-14544034

International Housing Rights Group to Conduct Investigation on the Laperal Eviction

MEDIA ADVISORY

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) an international human rights organization based in Geneva, Switzerland sent legal officer Ben Rutledge to conduct investigation on the violent eviction that happened in Laperal Compound last April 28.

The fact finding will start tomorrow, May 11 at 10:00 AM. COHRE Legal Officer Ben Rutledge will be accompanied by Urban Poor Associates’ Task Force Anti-Eviction team.

COHRE says, “The use of violence against residents and particularly against women, who try to protect their homes against illegal forced evictions breaches a number of international human rights standards the Philippines are obliged to follow, including the right to security of the person guaranteed under Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).”

Date: MAY 11, 2011 (WEDNESDAY)

Time: 10:00 AM

Venue: 4050 Bernardino st. Guadalupe Viejo, Makati City (LAPERAL COMPOUND)

Please Cover.

Urban Poor Still Search for Shelter

16 December 2010 (Thursday). Three thousand urban poor people marched from Carlos Palanca St. to Mendiola today repeating the question asked by Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem: "Do you have a decent place where we can stay?"

Young urban poor acted as Mary and Joseph led the crowd to Mendiola to remind President Benigno Aquino III that the poor are still searching for shelter. Through Panunuluyan they are knocking on the Palace door, asking the president to grant their request to meet him to discuss their pressing worries and to urge him implement the covenant he signed during the campaign period.

Participants include children, old people, victims of demolitions, scavengers, relocated railroad families, people’s organizations, various non-government organizations, friends and supporters.

The theme of this year’s Panunuluyan is “Si Maria at ang mga Mahihirap ay patuloy na naghahanap ng Matutuluyan”. For more than two decades, urban poor group reenacted the old tradition of Joseph and Mary going from place to place looking for a place to settle in and where Mary can have a baby with the modern problem of homelessness of the people.

The Panunuluyan is sponsored by members of Task Force Anti-Eviction composed of non-government organizations such as Urban Poor Associates (UPA), Community Organizers Multiversity (COM), Community Organization of the Philippine Enterprise (COPE), with the help of various NGOs and people’s organizations.

According to UPA, there are thousand of homeless families in Metro Manila mainly because of forced evictions, illegal demolitions, and other concerns such as lack of access to affordable housing, high cost of living, labor contractualization, rural to urban migration displacements due to armed conflict and graft and corruption.

“We are afraid that the number of homeless people will grow in Metro Manila and its surrounding areas, if the 300,000 families threatened with eviction will consent to be removed without adequate relocation,” said UPA Deputy Coordinator Ted Añana.

UPA demolition monitoring shows that most of the families who will be forcibly evicted are those living along the waterways and estuaries to give way for the rehabilitation of the Pasig River. But urban poor people living along waterways have had been proposing an alternative housing solution. They sought the help of Palafox architects who created a design of housing along the waterways that will not interfere with the cleaning of the river, and the people living on the esteros will have a decent place to dwell in the city.

Añana concluded, “There are many efforts done by the urban poor. But it is just placed in a backseat. We have high hopes that the new administration will consider the proposal of the people and that the president will heed our call to implement the covenant he signed during the campaign period.” -30-

Panunuluyan ng Maralitang Tagalungsod 2010

We are having our annual Panunuluyan of the Urban Poor again on the morning of December 16, 2010 (Thursday) from 8:00 to 11:00 AM.

Panunuluyan recreates the search of Joseph and Mary for shelter where Jesus might be born. We see this event in the light of the urban poor people’s search for homes, peace and a decent life. The theme of the celebration, “Si Maria at ang mga mahihirap ay patuloy na naghahanap ng Matutuluyan.”

Beginning at 8:00Am, about 3,000 urban poor will march from Carlos Palanca Street (Near Quinta Market) to P. Casal Street and on to Mendiola.

The celebration will be led by 200 urban poor women and men portraying Mama Mary and Joseph. There will be a mobile stage for the reenactment of the search of Joseph and Mary for a place to dwell in.

Urban poor say, “Through this Panunuluyan, we want to show the President that we want to meet with him to discuss our present worries and to push for the covenant he signed during the campaign period to be implemented.”

Photo ops: 200 women will dance and end the dance by holding up the 200 baby dolls, demanding a better life for their children. There will be three walking billboards labeled (1) “Have you forgotten us?” referring to the difficulty they have had meeting the president; (2) The covenant signed by the President and the poor during the campaign period; (3) “We are still here” saying we are still suffering in the slums.

Date: December 16, 2010 (Thursday)

Time: 8:00 to 11:00 AM

Assembly Point: Carlos Palanca St.

Please Cover.

UPA study says incidence of evictions went up

14 December 2010. The number of urban poor families who experienced evictions in the first three months of President Benigno Aquino III administrations’ July-September 2010 increased by 579% percent over the total of a year ago for the same time period, according to a study of Urban Poor Associates’ (UPA).

From July to September 2009, 502 families were evicted in 10 demolition incidents, while in the same period this year, 3,407 families in 10 demolition incidents lost their homes. Six were government lands, 3 were privately claimed while the other lot both claimed by the government and a private individual.

These eviction incidents are considered high for a new administration. When former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took over as president in 2001, she declared government would not demolish homes unless in-city relocation was provided. According to some housing officials, it was a de facto moratorium on demolitions, since government did not have any in-city relocation places. Thus, there were no evictions in her first three months in office.

In 2001 and 2002, the families evicted were 2,073 and 1,043 families respectively. She also signed a number of presidential proclamations declaring government lands for socialized housing sites or housing sites for the poor. On December 10, 2002 she issued Executive Order No. 152 that demanded government agencies to secure certificates of compliance before implementing demolitions. This helped lessen the cases of eviction.

However, in the third year of her presidency and onwards PGMA’s administration reversed her anti-eviction policy. The biggest demolition in our country’s history affecting 90,000 families happened along the North-South Rail project. The big majority of the evicted families complained of inadequately prepared relocation sites and joblessness.

The eviction incidents in President Noy-Noy Aquino’s firtst three months in office are considered high especially among the urban poor because he had signed a covenant with them during the campaign period at Del Pan Sports Complex, Tondo, Manila, March 6. The Covenant promised an end to illegal forced evictions and shows a bias for in-city relocation. Such relocations have not been implemented yet. Instead demolitions, some of them violent, continued during his first 100 days.

Evictions

From January to September 2010, a total of 8,326 families in 31 demolition incidents were evicted from their homes. Some 5,479 families received relocation in Calauan, Laguna; Montalban; Norzagaray, Bulacan; San Isidro Rodriguez; and in Lupang Arenda, Taytay Rizal. The main complaint, however, was that the relocation areas were too far from the city and in places where there are no jobs. Hunger is prevalent in the relocation sites.

There were two violent demolitions in the first 100 days of Pres. Noy-noy Aquino: San Roque II and 7^th Street in New Manila, both in Quezon City. The government used the SWAT, firemen and policemen to break up the barricades of the resisting residents.

UPA found that the residents of San Roque clung to the verbal promise of former President Joseph Estrada of on-site development.

The government reasons for demolitions were the cleaning of esteros, implementing the Quezon City business district plan, and expansion of local government facilities.

Government Intervention

President Benigno Aquino III himself ordered the stopping of the San Roque demolition and relocation from the United States where he was attending a UN event.

Secretary of Interior and Local Government Jesse Robredo stopped a demolition in Santolan, Pasig, where 2,000 residents would have been victims of an eviction.

“The first three months under the new administration show that the old problems involving violent and illegal demolitions are apt to continue, unless government makes special effort to stop them,” said UPA Deputy Coordinator Ted Añana.

“I hope the Aquino government will tap the various government agencies and local governments to become implementors of housing rights law, instead of violators. The president must also push the Covenant for the welfare of the poor,” he added.

Eviction Threats

Data gathered by UPA shows that there are 350,140 families threatened with eviction in Metro Manila and the surrounding area.

The government must find win-win solutions that will uphold the interest and rights of the poor and allow the necessary infrastructure of the city to be built, urban poor organizations say. Many urban poor groups and housing rights advocates are proposing slum upgrading and on-site development.

Añana conluded, “The President should start with imposing a moratorium on demolitions while they scrutinize and plan the future of the poor.” -30-

Two economies, two presidents

Commentary : Two economies, two presidents

By Denis Murphy Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: October 28, 2010

ON THE last Sunday of September my wife, our daughter and I walked through Central Park on what New Yorkers said was the loveliest day of the year. Just a few steps into the park from the midtown traffic, we were stunned by how deeply and vividly green the trees and open fields were. The park glowed like a giant emerald. We walked down Fifth Avenue to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Rockefeller Center. Everyone we saw looked young, happy and prosperous, except for a South Asian woman who lay curled up on the sidewalk in her sari near the cathedral. No one looked at her. If they saw her, they looked quickly away. For that day no one wished to worry about the poor and the economy. Poverty is not very visible in New York. Even poor families come out of the supermarkets pushing overloaded carts of food. Economic insecurity, however, is rooted just beneath the surface. Bob Herbert, writing in the New York Times, said: “The American economy over the last 40 years (since the Nixon years) has given unparalleled wealth to the very, very rich, undermined the living standards of the middle class and crushed the poor.” Only the super-rich have benefited, the top 1 or 2 percent of the population. Herbert pointed out that the pauperization of 98 percent of Americans is not the result of impersonal market forces gone amok, but the consequence of the conscious planning of the economic elite to achieve ever greater wealth for themselves no matter what damage was done to the rest of the population. The growing poverty of the people is the collateral damage of the greed of the very rich. He wrote: “The middle class is finally on its knees. Jobs are scarce and good jobs even scarcer. Government and corporate policies have been whacking working Americans every which way for the past three or four decades while globalization and technological wizardry were wreaking employment havoc, the movers and shakers in government and in the board rooms of the great corporations were embracing privatization and deregulation with the fervor of fanatics. The safety net was shredded, unions were brutally attacked and demonized, employment training and jobs programs were eliminated, higher education costs skyrocketed, and the nation’s infrastructure, a key to long-term industrial and economic health, deteriorated.” Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is in trouble. His Democrats may lose the House of Representatives in next month’s election. His approval ratings are down. New Yorkers who voted for him enthusiastically two years ago are disappointed and even angry with him. These days political talk is always angry talk. Compared with the somber economic and political news from the US, we now have good news in the Philippines. We can learn, however, from the US failures and weaknesses as we once sought to learn from its successes. If Herbert and other similarly minded experts are correct, the US economy has been undone by the super-rich and their allies in Congress who have gained near-total control over who gains and who loses in the economy. The rich and powerful in the Philippines exert at least the same amount of control over the Philippine economy as their counterparts in the US have over theirs. Who watches these men and women? President Aquino should have a salutary fear that the Filipino rich will manipulate the economic gains to their near-exclusive benefit as the US rich have done. The President has spoken enthusiastically of the benefits of government-private business partnerships, but it would be tragic if these ended up benefiting the very rich and few others. Corruption must be controlled, but there are many legal ways in which financial wizards can channel economic growth into their coffers and away from those of the middle-income and poor people. Who watches out for this? Who protects the President’s back on this issue? Who makes sure that he is not betrayed by the very rich? Obama is criticized now for having spent too much time and political capital trying to negotiate with the Republicans, when it was clear from the beginning they had no intention of negotiating or working with him, and were out simply to stonewall all his efforts. Instead, Obama should have acted single-mindedly from Day One for his priority goals, the critics say. In the beginning he had high popularity ratings, so he could have done almost whatever he wished to do. Now it is more difficult. “Ripeness is all,” Shakespeare tells us. Now seems the best time for President Noynoy to assist the poor, before political problems mount for him and his choices become limited. Finally, Obama is criticized for not explaining his programs carefully to ordinary Americans, his healthcare program, for example. He has found that the people do not support his programs because they often do not understand how they benefit from them. If the ordinary people support a president’s programs, Congress will have to pass the necessary laws. The most important step for a reform president is to get the unequivocal support of ordinary citizens. No Congress or boards of directors can resist the power of a president who brings with him the support of the nation. When President Noynoy undertakes specific legislations and programs to benefit the poor and lower middle-income people, he will be dependent on the strong and loyal support of these groups. Few others will back him. The more time he spends with the poor and middle-income people, explaining his programs and listening to their wishes, the more they will support him when the crucial days arrive and basic issues of social justice are at stake. (Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His e-mail address is upa@pldtdsl.net.)