Quezon City’s Award winning Housing Program is Precedent setting (Philippine Star)
Quezon City’s socialized housing program is set to be conferred the prestigious Galing Pook award of the country’s best governance programs and the award from the Home Development Mutual Fund for the city government as one of the Top 20 Developers in the Philippines. The program is precedentsetting in scale and deeply rooted in terms of sustainability and multipartnership arrangements.
Thus far fully constructed are 2,415 housing units, with 8,179 more to go. Of our 10 Housing Projects under various stages of development, all are incity and seven are onsite. This is one of city government’s strategies for social inclusion; with the city government taking on the responsibility of taking on the care of our own. Onsite relocation is very difficult because of the denseness of squatted areas, the existence of syndicates and the resistance of those renting out units and those making money out of the informal settlers.
The program seeks to provide a solution to the lack of a Metrowide socialized housing program, except for that provided by the National Housing Authority. Primary beneficiaries are informal settlers living along highrisk areas, especially those in floodprone areas and waterways. The solutions are not only dwelling units but development of wellorganized communities.
The housing units are not doleouts; beneficiaries must pay back through three alternative forms of financing, to ensure that funds are plowed back to create more housing units. Thus, far the collection success rate has been 100%. The program tackles the problem of affordability by keeping land and housing construction costs down. The ceiling is that set by the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) for socialized housing, which is Php 450,000 as the package cost for land and dwelling unit. For land acquisition to be viable, it must cost Php 3,500 per square meter or less. For property owners whose lands have been squatted for years, even decades, they agree to the lower than market price, rather than get nothing for the land at all.
The city government has managed to expand the resources needed for creating these housing communities by signing an agreement with One Meralco Foundation to take care of the electrical connections of the housing units in Housing Projects 1 and 2, as part of their corporate social responsibility. The Foundation’s outlay has been almost Php 6 million for the energization of Housing Projects 1 and 2. Habitat for Humanity is contributing to housing construction in Housing Projects 1 and 4.
To ensure a steady source of income, the beneficiaries receive training in livelihood projects by the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), which ties up the microproducers with their member companies, which assures a sure market for the products. The QCLGU’s Sikap Buhay office also provides additional skills training. Beneficiaries’ children entering college are offered scholarships thru the city’s Scholarship Youth Development Program, as long as they pass the college entrance exam.
Tackled at the outset was the generation of the large amount of funds needed to develop new housing communities. In 2011, the LGU began imposing the idle land tax and the socialized housing tax which generated about Php 486 million. Add to this the Php 126 million collected from direct sale and CMP, which are deposited in a Special Account dedicated to housing.
Source: The Philippine Star Sunday, page N1 October 12, 2014