Capítulo 4. Planificación de Trayectorias para un Sistema Multirrobot
4.5. Efectos de la replanificación de velocidades
Insufficient supply of affordable housing for informal settlers20 may be traced to the mismatch in rapid
increase in urban population resulting to an enormous demand for shelter and tenure security. With prohibitively expensive lands and high rental rates in the urban areas amidst declining real incomes, it is not surprising that cities host informal settler families in various types of unauthorized housing units with insecure tenure. Market values of residential lands in Metro Manila, for example, range from PhP3,000 to as high as PhP42,000 per square meter, far beyond the incomes earned by the majority of the urban poor. However, people need to live in areas where economic opportunities are available, and thus it becomes advantageous for most of them to occupy idle lands owned by government or the private sector. In a way, the proliferation of slums in Philippine cities is a coping mechanism for urban dwellers with affordable limits far below the cost of available supply.
The components of delivering homes and establishing sustainable neighbourhoods requires a step change in the provision of affordable housing and informal settlements upgrading to ensure more effective delivery in ways that provide informal settlers with choice and options tailored to their needs. The approach should lead to better life opportunities and break the cycles of disadvantage and dependency.
5.4.1 Unsuitable land use, building regulations, and the mismatch of high demand, low purchasing power.
20 “State of Philippine Cities”, Dr Anna Marie Karaos of PHILSSA and Gerald Nicolas of John Carrol, Institute of Church and
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The informal settlers will always prefer an in–city site to avoid displacement from where they are now, and most importantly, stay close to their source of income, whether formal or informal. Further, being near the place where they used to dwell, they will continue to enjoy and preserve familiar and easy access to schools, hospitals, malls and other amenities/facilities. They will be provided with all the same basic utilities: water and power supply, although not necessarily inclusive of the sanitation aspect. However, such services may require an unaffordable, normally exorbitant, land acquisition cost, if privately owned. On the other hand, the ISFs would generally experience the costly and slow titling process, should the land be covered by a presidential proclamation or owned by an LGU willing to allocate it for resettlement purposes. Due to the constraint in the size of available land against the large number of target beneficiaries, the more expensive low rise building (LRB) is usually considered as the remedy. NHA estimates that even with the land shouldered by an LGU or national government, an 18 sqm unit of LRB would cost nearly PhP590,000, or twice the “all in” cost for a same area row house.21
POLICY IMPLICATION/S:
For most informal settlement upgrading, the usual choice is an off city resettlement. This is based on the premise that an urban land space will always have more commercial value other than being used as in-city land for residence of informal settlers. While the “all in” land acquisition plus the cost of site development and shelter is far cheaper at PhP290k for an 18 m2 row house on a 28
m2 lot, it also has its disadvantages. These includes, among others, the difficulty in access,
significantly added travel time and transportation costs to and from the city where they work, considerable cost for ROW acquisition and construction of access roads, provision of community facilities, absence or late provision of basic utilities like water and electricity and non-proximity to schools, hospitals, malls and other basic amenities.22 As experienced in the past resettlement
projects, the absence of viable livelihood opportunities in the new sites has not been solved to date.
After relocation, families are left to fend for themselves, and more often than not, sell rights to other non-qualified settlers and transfer back to other slum areas to be reintegrated as part of the ever increasing slum population.
Most of the informal settlers belong to the lowest 3 income deciles and thus barely have the capacity to amortize the cost of shelter even for the cheaper off-site scheme, considering the additional costs on transport to and from work, school, market, and other facilities. Even the poor sector belonging to the 4th decile can only afford PhP1333/mo for its socialized housing
requirement. This amount is barely enough to amortize P200k loan at a low 4.5% interest for 30 years. The poor sector in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd deciles can only afford monthly housing expenditures
of P480, PhP737 and PhP903, respectively. Hence, it is not surprising that for most resettlement areas, collection of monthly housing payments is a perennial problem.
5.4.2 Inadequate supply of new housing units.
Two types of sectors are involved in the production of new resettlements and shelters for ISF, the private sector and the government sector. Due to a number of constraints, the combined productions of these two sectors are not enough to fully address the required housing demand for the poor. Private Sector
21 NHA data for off-city and in-city cost/unit with 150 units/ha for one-storey units and 400 units/ha for four-storey buildings,
HUDCC Presentation of Findings on Socialized Housing, July 2013.
22 HUDCC, the agency overseeing these resettlement programs, explains these inadequacies as part of “incremental
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While the private sector has its line of housing projects, most of these developers cater to the middle or high income groups developing midrise/high rise condominiums, subdivisions and townhouses. In general, the private sector has indicated their reluctance in pursuing socialized housing projects, citing a combination of deterrents like difficulties in government approval of subdivision/housing plans, very low profit for these type of projects, use of subsidized base costs and interest rates for government projects, difficulty in financing approvals and affordable limits of the informal sector. These developers will mostly cater to salaried employees, those with access to bank financing or those who are members and can avail the housing packages of Pag-IBIG Fund, SSS and GSIS. A very small percentage of the poor informal sector will ever will be able to meet financing requirements under these lending facilities. One of the strategies to house the poor is to entice the private sector to invest in socialized housing. The UDHA intends to bring this provision to fruition through a combination of incentives and regulations. The incentives are in the form of tax exemptions and financing window under the HDMF for socialized housing acquisition. But HUDCC findings indicate that the Pag-IBIG window has hardly been accessed by the ISFs who belong to the lowest 3 income deciles.
POLICY IMPLICATION/S:
To maximize private sector participation, access to resources for production of units and incentives must be ensured. These have been presented in previous sections of this chapter and include developmental financing window, take out mechanism for individual ISF, expansion of qualified packages under the BOI-DTI ITH incentive structure.
Government Sector
For the government sector, different agencies are actively involved from planning, financing, and implementation of resettlement to new sites, onsite upgrading for the poorest of the poor. HUDCC is the umbrella organization that oversees and regulates the complementary efforts of other key shelter agencies (KSAs) which include HLURB, NHMFC, SHFC, HDMF/Pag-Ibig Fund, NHA, and the HGC. The SHFC and NHA undertake socialized housing projects for the informal sector.
The major implementing arm of government for the resettlement projects is the NHA. It has good track record of meeting its target but due to its budget limitation, the agency’s production capacity barely makes a dent on the housing requirement for this sector. Cost recovery thru collections of monthly amortizations of beneficiaries is weak and hampered by collection problem.
The UDHA states that LGUs should spearhead resettlement projects being the end receiver of these informal settlers. However, there are misinterpretations and/or mis-implementations by LGUs of said provisions. It has also been observed that majority of LGUs are opposed to the use of land in their locality as relocation sites. The identification of relocation site is a key consideration for the success of resettlement projects and the receiving LGU identified should have the willingness to take in the migrants. The receiving LGUs are often reluctant to accept incoming ISFs due to the limited social services and economic opportunities in the locality. The cost implications of maintenance of the relocation sites upon turnover to the communities is another issue. It is also noted that the LGU shelter program if ever included in the CLUP, is generally for paper compliance to the prescribed contents of the CLUP only.
POLICY IMPLICATION/S:
Capacity building at the level of the LGUs must be designed and implemented. HUDCC could help source funds from donors to ensure that the assigned staff at the LGUs received the necessary training on estate management and social intermediation at pre and post project phases.
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5.4.3 Reduction in Housing Stock.
Mostly built of light materials and generally along danger areas, the existing housing stock of ISFs tend to dwindle in times of natural calamities. As if this is not enough, man-made interference, like accidental fires and forced evictions on private lands and even displacements due to armed conflicts in Mindanao also contributes to the dwindling ISF housing stock.
The recent 7.3 magnitude earthquake in Bohol, the latest super typhoon Yolanda and other previous typhoons have caused considerable reductions in the housing stock. Reports from Bohol earthquake indicated hundreds of thousands homes destroyed. In the recent super typhoon Yolanda, initial reports reveal reductions in housing stock of even greater magnitude. Nestling along danger areas like river banks, steep mountain slopes, along coastal areas, these homes are always prone and susceptible to either flooding, landslides, or even storm surge during typhoons. These reductions will again be added to the ever climbing backlog/demand for new shelter units for the poor.
With the onset of climate change, typhoons of higher return periods are expected to be more frequent compared to their occurrence in the past. Such will aggravate reductions in housing stock.
POLICY IMPLICATION/S:
Adoption of onsite upgrading where possible should always be an initial consideration in lieu of resettlement or relocation. Then the existing structures maybe improved instead of demolition which actually decreases available housing stock.
5.4.4 Legal /Regulatory and other Weaknesses
Weak Enforcement of Anti-Squatting Law.
There are no policies and effective preventive strategies to control increase of informal settlers in Metro Manila except for the City of Marikina which has taken steps toward cities without slums strategy. Generally, LGUs do not possess the institutional capacity for curbing the growth of informal settlements nor invested resources required to control the development of urban poor settlements even in such high risk areas as esteros, sidewalks, railways, and garbage dump sites. The anti-squatting law which requires resettlement for the informal settlers if they are occupying government lands and issuance of court order to vacate private land needs to be revised.At the national level, there are no policies that guide the local governments on preventive actions against proliferation of informal settlements. National planning and budgetary allocation have, over the past decades, adopted a sectoral approach which did not fully consider the spatial implications of public investments, policies and programs. Regional development planning and physical planning frameworks have been introduced in the medium term development plan (MTDP) but these seem not to be harmonious to the sectoral plan.
Compliance to the 20% Balanced Housing Provision of UDHA and Incentive Structure of Government.
Originally, the government requires developers of non-socialized housing projects (except for condominium projects) to set aside 20% of non-socialized subdivision project area or total costs for socialized housing provision. The implementing rules of UDHA has been amended several times to include other means of compliance to this provision including investment in housing bonds, onsite upgrading of CMP, LCMP, NHA resettlement projects. However, compliance has not been adequately monitored.Developing a National Informal Settlements Upgrading Strategy for the Philippines
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The benefits from tax exemptions for socialized housing developers has not been included in the income tax holiday (ITH) under the DTI-BOI Investment Priorities Plan (IPP).
Bureaucratic Process.
The titling process of lands proclaimed for socialized housing remains cumbersome. For some proclaimed lands, valuation issues also arise and transfer of tenurial rights to beneficiaries or availability of title as collateral requirement for loan can be difficult thereby causing delay to project implementation.POLICY IMPLICATION/S:
Adoption of rights-based secure tenure instruments as negotiable instruments to lessen titling expenses and hasten process of securing tenure for ISFs may be enforced. Take-off from the BSP circular for housing microfinance would facilitate the planned course of actions to achieve the objective of accepting tenurial documents used by various agencies in the sector.
Linkage with the land registration, titling, and management agencies should be revived to iron out documentation process amongst agencies concerned.
5.4.5 Lack of information/Database23
There is difficulty in identifying target beneficiaries of government housing programs. Census tagging of beneficiaries for resettlement projects is a tedious process due to the unabated increase of potential beneficiaries magnified by the presence of professional squatters and syndicates. Income segregation among the affected households is also difficult to implement and thus, subsidies may not have be well- targeted. It has also been difficult to track down the awardees of housing units due to the lack of a monitoring system.
POLICY IMPLICATION/S:
Under UDHA the LGUs were required to identify and register all beneficiaries for socialized housing in their respective locality. The HUDCC, on the other hand, was to design a system for beneficiary registration to assist the LGUs. A list of 464 LGUs was selected to test the system and 320 of them submitted inventories in 1994 consisting of 842,642 beneficiaries. After this initial effort, however, the LGUs no longer conducted periodic updates there are no incentives given to sustain such database except for those needed for electoral and tax purposes. Thus, the list or identification of program beneficiaries is often ad hoc and politically dependent. The law also disqualified professional squatters or squatting syndicates to any housing program of government and provided the definitions for said groups. Unfortunately, these definitions are difficult to apply in the field since existing parameters are inadequate to assess sufficiency of income specifically in the informal sector. Another problem is the abandonment or transfer of awarded homelots by the beneficiaries, the reasons for which could be due to legitimate reasons such as the lack of economic opportunities and basic services in the distant resettlement sites.