QC housing program targets 100,000 residents

The Quezon City government is targeting at least 100,000 urban poor residents of the city for a housing program expected to go full blast next year.

Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said the housing program, a key component of his administration’s poverty alleviation campaign aims to resettle and provide decent homes for over 28,000 poor families living in danger zones such as waterways and road right of way in government, private and public lands.

"The Urban Poor Affairs Office (UPAO) is expected to finalize a detailed inventory of informal settler beneficiaries for the program until December this year," Belmonte said.

He said the city’s program involves on-site acquisition through the direct sale and off-site relocation and development.

Under the program, beneficiaries acquire the lot they have been occupying for years through the community mortgage program by monthly amortization to the National Home Mortgage Financing Corp. (NHMFC).

Apart from this, the city government is now embarking on the construction of medium-rise buildings (MRBs) under its Housing Urban Renewal Authority (HURA), the city’s corporate arm for the housing program.

Groundbreaking for five MRBs has been conducted in Barangay Escopa 111 last month. The city government has identified other housing site in Barangays Bungad, Bahay Toro, Manresa, San Jose, Silangan, San Antonio, Qurino and Bagumbayan.

Belmonte, in his state of the city address early this week, vowed to confront the problem of poverty in the city as he announced his administration’s thrust of implementing more development and infrastructure projects to attain his vision of making Quezon City a quality community.

"In a city where more than half of the residents are poor, poverty alleviation assumes the urgency of a life and death situation," Belmonte said.