Housing in the Philippines
Human Rights Dialogue 1.11 (Summer 1998) "Toward a "Social Foreign Policy"
with Asia"
Corazon Soliman, Shyama Venkateswar
June 5, 1998
The following is a summary of the breakout group on housing, as reported
by Shyama Venkateswar, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International
Affairs
Moderator Corazon Soliman (Community Organization Training and
Research Advocacy Institute) initiated the discussion by asking the
American and Asian participants to share their views on what they felt were
some of the barriers to adequate housing for citizens on both sides of the
Pacific. Although the participants represented countries with different levels occupied by low-income groups, with the rest occupied by middle-income
of economic development and political regime types, they agreed on the
existence of a common set of barriers.
In the United States as well as in Asian countries, a major issue is the
scarcity of affordable housing and access to credit. Even when housing is
available, the prohibitive costs of renting or purchasing and the lack of easy
access to mortgage or lending systems place decent housing beyond the
reach of ordinary citizens.
A second barrier is the insecurity of tenure and property rights. Both
Soliman and Kenneth Fernandes (Asian Coalition for Housing Rights)
raised the issue of how in Southeast Asia the lack of secure titles and the
prevalence of informal ties to land often result in eviction. Without proper
documentation of ownership, those evicted, usually the poor and the
marginalized, have no recourse to the law.
The American participants were divided over the value of having property
rights set within a clearly defined legal system. While some participants
commented that a tight legal structure was simply a way to tax and charge
citizens during the transfer of property or the closing of a transaction,
others, like Harold O. Wilson (Local Initiatives Support Corporation)
argued that a formal legal structure supported by the state was necessary in
order for the state to provide affordable housing to low-income groups.
This led to a discussion of a third category of barriers connected to the role
of government: overregulation and bureaucratic rigidity. Some participants
expressed the need for government involvement in the provision of
infrastructural necessities like sewage, water, and the like; others argued
that the involvement of government often led to abuse and corruption.
Participants from the United States and Asia identified instances where
government involvement often hurt ordinary citizens. Wilson gave an
example of communities on the U.S.-Mexico border that are unable to
afford to build their houses because of the stringency of building codes in
the area. As an example of bureaucratic rigidity in Asia, Fernandes
mentioned that many of the standards in place in Asian countries are
designed by Western-trained bureaucrats and planners, who appropriate
laws that are wholly incompatible with local conditions. Fernandes brought
up the case of Karachi, another example of government involvement, where
only 5 to 8 percent of the government-sponsored housing projects were
groups who bought their property on speculation.
Class, race, age, and gender discrimination pose another set of barriers. Tom
Jones (Habitat for Humanity International) noted that even in the United
States, where there is a willingness to help find affordable housing for
people of different cultures, races, and classes, there is still a general
attitude of NIMBY (not in my backyard). In other words, supporting the
idea of housing for all is fine in theory, but it is difficult to implement such
plans. People are reluctant to integrate and share neighborhoods with those
from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds.
The group turned to the question of finding common solutions for the
housing crisis on both sides of the Pacific, and specifically to the means of
providing affordable housing for all citizens in both rural and urban
communities. A common thread was the need to empower ordinary citizens
by organizing them, thereby giving them the opportunity to engage with
policymakers and planners in decisions regarding their neighborhoods and
communities. Lawrence Chickering (International Center for Economic
Growth) gave examples of housing initiatives that his organization has led
in California. By organizing tenants to create self-governed organizations in
public housing projects, the NGO was able to turn dysfunctional crime-
ridden communities into productive communities with less crime and fewer
racial tensions.
Citing another example, Wilson described a successful initiative in
Honduras in the 1960s. A housing foundation started giving small, starter
loans to squatter communities with the stipulation that the loans be repaid.
The foundation also help form cooperatives, NGOs, and credit unions to
serve those particular areas of the community. The key, according to
Wilson, was organizing communities. Once that had been achieved, the
loans were repaid, and soon afterward the shanty towns constructed from
cardboard had been replaced by concrete and cement structures.
Soliman asserted that it is important for Asians and Americans to work with
their governments in planning and developing communities. She gave the
example of the Philippines, where NGO groups advocating for housing
rights actively search out planners and technocrats to elicit from them ideas
about how to develop communities. She cited a land-sharing agreement in
Bangkok, in which slum dwellers had negotiated with the government and
the monarch to divide the land on which they squatted; a portion of it was
used by the crown property to build commercial buildings where business
was conducted, and the rest was used by the people to design houses for
themselves. Institutionalizing that kind of interaction, Soliman argued, helps
cities to move in the direction of being “people-owned” rather than
“planner-owned” or “government-owned.” However, she cautioned that
these attempts in Asia tend to be more successful in secondary cities, as
opposed to megacities like Metro Manila and Bangkok.
All the participants agreed that this work could not be accomplished by the
NGO and nonprofit communities alone. It is essential that local community
organizations and housing advocacy groups work in close cooperation with
the relevant branches of government to find solutions to the housing crisis
and to build sustainable communities. Jones and Fernandes offered concrete
examples of such successful collaborations in the United States and in
Cambodia, respectively.
Although ownership is construed in different ways—in the United States, in
a legal manner and in Asia, more informally—the participants stressed that
giving people property rights and secure titles to land would result in their
being able to use the property as collateral, to invest time and energy in
their communities, and to become politically active in demanding local
schools, roads, and hospitals. In their personal experiences, these
participants had found that providing secure titles and soft loans motivated
people to create and build their communities according to their own
definition of quality of life rather than that of government bureaucrats and
elite planners.
The group also discussed the role of intermediary institutions like the U.S.
community development corporations (CDCs) at the community, city, and
international levels that determine policies in cooperation with city
planners. In this context, the participants noted the value of intermediary
national-level groups that help to aggregate resources for community-based
organizations and train them in advocacy. By amassing funds for low-
income and disenfranchised people and bringing together those who own
capital and those who own land, CDCs help people to build their houses,
organize, and empower themselves. Wilson brought up the Self-Help
Housing Program as a model in place in rural America. Under this program,
the Department of Agriculture makes grants to CDCs to organize families to
construct their own houses through low-interest loans.
Underlying the discussion of barriers and solutions to
the housing problem is the notion that housing is not
simply a matter of building concrete structures or
infrastructure, but is intrinsically a social and human
problem that relates to the empowerment of local
communities. Related to this are two questions on
democratic values: What is the common good and who
defines it? What is the optimal way in which
governments can be involved in regulations so that the
common good can be preserved? The idea of people-
centered solutions to housing problems highlights the
importance of people’s access to and control of their
own resources, and their ability to participate in larger
decision-making processes that relate to their lives.
Finally, building decent homes and communities is
strongly linked to creating economic value for the
families living in them. The participants concurred that
focusing on housing development is the first step in
generating economic development in rural and urban
areas in the United States and Asia.
A Story
High Rises and the Poor
Excerpt from:
Housing by People. Asian Coalition for Housing Rights. No 12, April,
1999, p 9.
Vitas Housing in Tondo:
How NOT to Design a Medium-Rise Building for the Poor
What happens when poor people who live on the ground, are 'upgraded' into
flats that are up in the air? There are some obvious benefits in "going up,"
since more people can be packed into less land. But it's expensive, hard to
maintain and the complex web of connections which knit poor communities
together do not always survive the transition from street to sky.
The National Housing Authority's enormous Vitas Housing Project was
built in Tondo, Manila, in the 1980s to resettle families displaced by the
Port Authority's new container terminal. Ten of the project's 27 buildings
were allocated for socialized housing while the rest were sold on the open
market. The brand-new, engineer-designed, pink-painted buildings were
inaugurated in 1990, and marked a revival of NHA's medium-rise housing
program.
A recent study by Urban Poor Associates examines the project's planning,
design, construction and management, and uses extensive interviews with
residents to find out how the occupants are adapting to a “vertical
environment.” In a time when many slum redevelopment programs are
opting for similar high-density housing types, the study makes a valuable
catalogue of all the things NOT to do.*
It's hard to imagine a project doing more wrong than Vitas, which in just
nine years has deteriorated into what one Manila journalist called "a
nuthouse." The buildings are falling apart, uncollected garbage is piling up,
walls and roofs in every unit leak, drains are clogged, broken sewage stacks
ooze excrement, stairways are crumbling, gangster-like syndicates have
taken control of the supply mains and extract fees for water and electricity.
Forty-three percent of the occupants are no longer paying their rent or
making their mortgage payments, and nearly half perceive their stay in Vitas
as temporary, “until they can no longer bear to stay, or the NHA throws
them out for not paying.” Court cases against the NHA, and by the NHA,
abound.
Almost every aspect of the project seems to destroy community
rather than create it. Physical segregation of different types of
"beneficiaries" has exacerbated "us and them" divisions within
Vitas. Some residents are extremely poor relocatees from
nearby Smokey Mountain (the former city dump), who
continue sorting recyclable waste within the grounds, to the
chagrin of better-off neighbors who bought their units at
market rates, and who resent their mortgage payments
subsidizing these scavengers.
Contact between neighbors on different floors is due mostly
to quarrels. In one instance, a woman hacked down her
upstairs neighbor's door with a jungle bodo when there was
a leak. Unoccupied buildings elsewhere have been invaded
by squatters and social divisions throughout the project
have made the entire area into a war-zone. Drugs, crime
and violence are getting worse, kids are kept locked inside
their small units for safety. Only 33% of the residents belong
to one of the 18 residents organizations which have formed
in different buildings. There is no project-wide community
association.
The real bad guy at Vitas is not design. The buildings there aren't much
different from the standard walkup tenements you find all over Asian cities,
and not all of them are this bad.
But..... they had a stake in Vitas, if they felt this was their own community, would
What if strong, organized communities had been central in the planning, things have gotten so out of hand
allotment and management of the Vitas housing project? If people had felt