CREBA supports GMA housing program

The Chamber of Real Estate and Builders Associations (CREBA) has come out in support of President Arroyo’s housing program as a means of aggressively responding to the crisis of homelessness in the country.

CREBA national president Charlie V. Gorayeb said the President in her State of the Nation Address before Congress last week has stamped the housing program with "the urgency and the importance it deserves in confronting the crisis."

As a result, he said, housing, especially for the low-income and the underprivileged, is now one of the major centerpieces of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration.

The President vowed to push for a P20 million appropriation on top of a P10 billion contribution from the Pag-IBIG Fund, and P5 billion each from the housing portfolios of the Social Security System and the Government Service.

Gorayeb said that if the P50 billion from the unused funds of the Agri-Agra Fund is added to the P40 billion being made available by the President, the total seed money to spur housing activities will be P90 billion.

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Rafael Buenaventura had earlier confirmed the availability of the P50 billion Agri-Agra Fund.

The CREBA head said the President appears to have the political will to make sure that the funds needed are made available to ensure the success of "what she must have been convinced is the only solution to the problem of homelessness."

The President and House Speaker Jose de Venecia, according to Gorayeb, will make an effective "GMA-JDV housing team" to push an aggressive housing program. The Speaker, he said, espoused a pro-housing advocacy in his bid for the top House position.

CREBA had earlier called De Venecia, "a true champion of the sustainable housing program." The Speaker, it said, fully realizes that "an aggressive, well-managed and well-funded" housing program will have a pump-priming impact on the national economy, creating employment opportunities all around and catalyzing industries and sectors into frenzied activities.

Almost all the basic features of the GMA housing program, Gorayeb proudly said, have been part and parcel of CREBA’s advocacy for the last decade. The chamber, he said, has been selling the idea of a total and integrated approach as the only sensible, feasible and lasting solution to the housing problem.

The President also called on Congress to establish a full-fledged Department of Housing and Urban Development to spearhead government efforts in housing. CREBA said it had also been pushing for such a department and submitted its own proposals to strengthen the agency’s authority as the major government housing institution.

Secretary Michael Defensor of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), when still a congressman in the last Congress, was one of the main co-authors of the measure. But the Congress failed to pass the measure.

Another CREBA proposal which jibes with the administration’s housing strategy is the operation of a centralized secondary home mortgage market to help bolster the viability of the housing finance system.

Thus, CREBA said, the Macapagal-Arroyo housing strategy will confront the housing program on two fronts, the primary sourcing of funds and the secondary mortgage market. This, Gorayeb said, will ensure a continuous spin-off into securities or bonds of mortgages that will otherwise remain idle assets during years of amortization by home buyers.