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.
