Baguio dreams of zero housing backlog

BAGUIO CITY – Not for a white Christmas but for Christmases ahead sans homelessness and no more housing backlogs, a homegrown firm is pre-occupied with helping solve Baguio’s housing backlog.

By building high-rise condominium-type family housing units, development firm Goshen Land Capital wants to help solve the more than 50,000 housing backlog here.

“I know how hard and disheartening it is renting (for an apartment) for life,” Goshen’s president Alexander Bangsoy, a self-made Igorot-Kankanaey from Besao, Mountain Province, who himself eked his way up to Ateneo law school to become a lawyer said, of his own family’s experience.

Putting up Goshen Capital just a few years ago dreaming there would be no more homeless people in Baguio, Bangsoy came to discover that high-rise condominium housing is perfect for the highland resort city’s very limited space for development.

Perfect even more was, the city has already relaxed its local ban on more than four-storey buildings.

The city, sending a very welcome signal on investors to come in, Bangsoy said the relaxed height limit would put to rest issues concerning building construction while maintaining still “open areas” in the city that now has a population of 350,000.

“If we go higher, we turn the use of land more efficient,” he said as Goshen Capital has embarked on affordable yet classy condominium units in at least three locations in the city now.

By making high-rise housing, we do not only solve the housing backlog in the city that is almost 50,000 but also maintain the perfect 40-60 percent development level in the city for a beautiful and serene environment,” he said.

The four-storey (13.5 meters) height requirement in the city was codified in Ordinance 51-2001 or the Zoning Ordinance in buildings constructed in areas classified as R1, low density residential zone.

Already on its two projects, Goshen Land Capital is currently building the North Cambridge, a dormitory at Saint Louis University-Bakakeng Campus and the Courtyards at Leonila Hill for vacation homes.

With overdeveloped Baguio, Bangsoy said, citing a study by US-based realty monitoring firm CB Ellis, there is a need for vertical development, “hence the condo-type housing units we are offering.”

Starting with only P1,000,000, a family could have a home either via a loan package or cash.