P’sinan board approves housing trust fund

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan — The housing program of Gov. Victor Agbayani got a big boost when the provincial board passed an ordinance creating the Pangasinan Housing Trust Fund.

Embodied in Ordinance No. 21-2005 authored by fifth district board member Emmanuel Carancho, the trust fund, with an initial P8 million, will help ensure continuous funding for the province’s shelter program for the poor.

Engineer Alvin Bigay, head of the Pangasinan Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Office (PHUDCO), said the funding is expected to be sourced from the proceeds of the sale of underdeveloped land in Barangay Maniboc as well as the resettlement project in Barangay Pangapisan, both in this town.

Social housing and idle land tax will also augment the trust fund, he said.

Nearly 105,000 families in the province have no permanent dwellings. To address this problem, the PHUDCO was created by virtue of Executive Order No. 50-93 and Provincial Appropriation Ordinance No. 2 Series of 1995.

Since then, the PHUDCO has established linkages with key shelter agencies in developing two resettlement sites and five socialized housing projects, which benefited a total of 1,474 families.

In a 2001 province-wide inventory of lands, the PHUDCO gathered that there are 373 parcels of land with an aggregate area of 1,392 hectares that are potential sites for resettlement, socialized and economic/low-cost housing.

If developed, these lands can translate into some 97,440 homelots.

To pursue the provincial Pabahay program, Agbayani has devised an innovative scheme to generate funds to support the implementation of resettlement, socialized and economic/lost-cost housing projects.