Housing And Inclusive Growth

Decent living spaces are a critical issue among

the poor especially in urban areas.

Informal or illegal settlers living in :

1. shanties, occupying other people’s

land,

or squatting in the most unsanitary

places unimaginable such as

2. riverbanks
3. Streets and
4. bridges. 

Inequalities in shelter deprivation and access to basic services are most evident
particularly in cities where wealth and poverty exist in close proximity.

Metro Manila alone is home to:

 more than 4 million slum dwellers threatened by

- adverse congestion
- substandard housing
- and deteriorating environment

 They suffer from various sickness due to their location and the limited
infrastructure available.

 Effective town and shelter planning and urban infrastructure for people in
underserved areas and informal settlements are thus critical first steps to
their development.

 Relocating informal settlers and victims of natural and human-induced

disasters to safer areas is a critical challenge in the housing sector.
 The adverse impacts of climate change has made the relocation of
families living in danger zones more urgent.

 Natural disasters also induce further relocation to cities, which can

increase informal settlements.

 The government through the National Housing Authority (NHA) has

implemented resettlement projects since the 1970s as a major housing
program for the low-income sector.

 An evaluation of the NHA resettlement programs between 2003 and 2011

conducted by PIDS (Philippine Institute for Development Studies) under
senior research fellow Marife Ballesteros and senior research specialist
Jasmine Egana.

 It showed that in-city projects, despite their higher costs compared to off-
city projects, are more cost effective.

 In-city housing has higher long-term benefits given better chances of

finding employment and more income-generating opportunities.

 The availability of land for relocation projects, however, is a crucial

problem.

 For resettlement programs to be effective, land for socialized housing has

to be made available by local governments or the national government
especially in urban areas like Metro Manila.

 There is a need to study the feasibility of vertical development in in-city

housing and for the NHA to improve the production process for
incremental housing.

 In 2011, the government released PHP 50 billion to the newly formed

National Informal Settlement Upgrading System Program for informal
settlers living in perilous areas in Metro Manila.

 Two years later, two major policy reforms were adopted due to the slow
pace of its implementation.
a. First is the NHA Enhanced Resettlement Package that increases the
maximum cost of socialized housing units for off-city and in-city
 resettlements in order to build bigger and more disaster-resilient
houses.
b. Second is the expansion of the financing program of the Socialized
Housing Finance Corporation to include high-density housing (HDH).
The HDH addresses the problem of limited land for socialized
housing in urban areas by accommodating more families per unit of
land which also promotes building of better houses and improved
access to basic facilities and infrastructure.

 Ballesteros sums us an important shortcoming that needs to be

addressed:

“The Philippines lacks a national policy on shelter development that

integrates infrastructure, housing, and environmental concerns.

The current approach to shelter is primarily on a per project basis instead

of a city-wide shelter development.
The absence of a city-wide approach creates difficulties for the national
government and LGUs to address the housing problem on scale.”