A joint panel in Congress has urged the government to adopt an in-city housing policy and relocate government agencies in provinces to address the increasing number of housing backlogs and informal settler families in Metro Manila.
At the culmination of the National Housing and Urban Development Summit held on Tuesday at the San Juan Arena, Negros Occidental Rep. Alfredo Benitez and Senator Joseph Victor Ejercito, chair of the House committee on Housing and Urban Development and the Senate Committee on Urban Planning and Shelter and Resettlement, respectively, said their proposal will be able to address the 5.5-million housing backlogs and 584,425 ISFs in the National Capital Region.
"There are good housing laws already in place yet, we still face the age-old problem of increasing number of informal settlements in the urban centers, housing backlog, and lack of access to affordable housing units," Benitez said.
Several stakeholders attended the 10-month long summit, which is a joint initiative of the House Committee on Housing and Urban Development and the Senate Committee on Urban Planning and Shelter and Resettlement.
"The problem is that the government and the beneficiaries do not see eye to eye when it comes to housing solutions which make our housing programs fail. The in-city housing concept is something that the government can actually do as it is cost effective and it is what the ISFs prefer," Benitez added.
Under the in-city housing approach, informal settlers families will not be relocated outside the cities where they presently reside but rather, the government will find idle lands inside the city where the medium-rise building will be constructed.
"Access to decent and affordable housing is a constitutional mandate of the government. It is time that the right to the city and the right to the decent shelter is upheld by the government through the adoption of the in-city housing policy," Benitez pointed out.
Meanwhile, Benitez said that the summit also proposed the relocation of government agencies in provinces to provide more lands for socialized housing programs.
One example he cited was the Department of Agriculture.
For his part, Ejercito said he would work hard to enable the housing summit's agenda to materialize by pushing for the passage of more housing-related bills pending in Congress to help alleviate the country's demand for socialized housing.
"The number of informal settlers in Metro Manila alone has already ballooned to 584,524 families and we have seen the impracticality of the government's usual off-city relocation policy where relocatees from Metro Manila are brought to Rizal, Bulacan and Cavite. The proposed solutions of our housing summit will enable a wide range of options for decent and affordable housing and should be a priority agenda in the State's goal achieve inclusive growth," Ejercito said.
Ejercito stressed that the passage of several pending housing-related bills including review of rent control policies, creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, improving resettlement policies between sending and receiving LGUs and affordable financing schemes for middle and low-income families was imperative to strengthen the government's housing program.
