According to the legislative staff of Sen. Miguel Zubiri, a bicameral session is scheduled this August to tackle the proposed Magna Carta for Homeowners and Homeowners Associations. This will be a waste of time. There is no need for this law.

As the administrator of a gated subdivision for the past 20 years, and as secretary of a federation of homeowners associations for 10 years, let me address a few words to the bicameral committee.

First, as framed, the proposed legislation is the most inutile I have come across during my lifetime (and it has been a long 88 years). Why? Can you imagine that a law has to be enacted to guarantee the right of homeowners to basic services, which is a right they, as taxpaying citizens, already have? Is this not ridiculous? Whether they live in a gated subdivision or outside, homeowners already have this right. Why still enact a law to protect this right?

Second, when a homeowner decides to build his house inside a gated subdivision, he is aware and knows fully well that there is an existing homeowners association that the developer of the subdivision is mandated by law (PD 957) to organize. He knows that the association is required by law to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB).

Third, can you imagine a magna carta (does this not mean a bill of rights?) that will emasculate homeowners associations, which are mandated by law to be organized? Because if membership were to be made optional, many homeowners will resign from the association and stop paying their dues. They will just pay “reasonable” (who will decide this?) contributions for services when and if they please. If they do not pay, will the administrator (like me) have to sue them in court? As it is now, I have problems collecting dues and so I have to advance my own money so that our security guards will have something to eat.

For the information of the members of the bicameral committee, so they will understand why I am personally so aggrieved by this proposed magna carta, I was always present as secretary of our homeowners federation during the hearings held in Congress and when the Rep. Ruffy Biazon was prevailed upon by the federations to propose legislation to protect us from some quarters like congressmen wishing to use our roads to solve traffic problems.

One of them will remember that I excoriated him, in a letter to the Speaker of the House, for meddling with subdivision roads in Metro Manila when he had not yet passed laws solving the poverty of his constituents in Samar. Do you know that he even had the temerity to threaten us with contempt, we who were invited to the hearings “in aid of legislation?”

In view of the above, forget this Magna Carta and leave us gated subdivisions in peace with the HLURB, whose guidelines we were asked to help frame.

—CONSUELO D. SISON,
administrator, Alpha Village
Homeowners Associations Inc.,
Quezon City