‘Pro-farming or anti-housing?’

With the urban population continuing to increase by three percent yearly, some 127 million Filipinos will be living in cities by the year 2050. How would the government and the country cope with such a gigantic housing problem? Would the cities then be sustainable urban centers?

Right now, the housing shortage is estimated at four million housing units, and the homeless are not only the squatters, but the not so poor – the big middle-class sector, whose vitality and strength continue to sustain the nation through the bad times largely brought about by ambitious politicians and the extremist groups.

In the face of homelessness and the prospect of an unmanageable outburst in urban population, the response of Congress, if the proposed National Land Use Policy now before the Senate is any indication, is to ignore the people’s housing need and urban development. In fact, all other sectors of the nation are subordinated to agriculture and the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program billed as the government’s highest priorities.

Thus reacted housing industry leaders identified with the Subdivision and Housing Developers Association (SHDA). The SHDA, the country’s largest organization of housing developers, has been closely collaborating with the government housing sector led by the Housing and Urban Developing Coordinating Council (HUDCC) for the last few years in efforts to make the housing program succeed.

House Bill 6056, the proposed National Land Use Policy Act, states at the beginning, "It is the policy of the State to provide for a national, holistic and just allocation, utilization, management and development of the country’s resources to ensure their optimum use consistent with the principle of sustainable development." Thus, SHDA National president Malou Alferez said, the developers’ sector whole-heartedly agrees with this declaration of policy.

But, Alferez said, the bill’s detailed provisions give away its authors and supporters. For these immediately contradict this very policy by being too much biased for food security and giving the highest priority to the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Sure, farmers and agriculture production are important in the life of the country. But the bill would downgrade the other equally vital, basic needs of the people, particularly housing or shelter.

Worse, in other provisions, SHDA chairman Jesus B. Atencio bewailed, housing or shelter is de-emphasized, even altogether omitted or at most only vaguely assumed to be covered by the broad phrase "rational population distribution and settlements development."

"Housing" or "shelter" as a term to denote a basic human need appears to be taboo in the bill, indicating lack of concern. True, "socialized housing" is later defined as being designed for the underprivileged and the homeless. But millions of other poor and not so poor Filipinos are homeless, too.

To make sure that "actual practice and implementation" will conform to and be consistent with the proposed law’s policies and principles, Alferez and Atencio said, – to provide a national, holistic and most important of all, just allocation of our country’s land resources – basic shelter under the government’s mass housing program must be underscored. Atencio would give it what he calls "just and equitable emphasis and priority on the same high standing and importance as that of food security and the CARP.

After all, SHDA said, even the farmers need decent housing, medical care, education, and other basic services. Particularly in the case of housing, medical care, education, and other basic services.

Particularly in the case of housing, farmers have traditionally been directly employed in mass housing projects as carpenters, masons, tinsmiths plumbers, electricians or ordinary laborers during off planting seasons.

Moreover, the developers believe, and most respected economists agree, that fully supporting a massive housing production program for the some 4.5 million homeless Filipino families will certainly stimulate the economy.