Homeless
An estimated 550,000 families or nearly three million individuals in the National Capital Region (NCR) live in informal settlements. Put another way, one of every four NCR residents lives in informal settlements. The largest number of informal settler families—some 222,000 families—live in Quezon City. The city of Manila comes in second with 104,000 families.
These figures, which I have rounded off for easier reading, come from a 2011 memorandum of the Department of the Interior and Local Government to President Aquino, a report first cited by Business World columnist Carol Araullo. I wrote her to comment on the figures and she very generously sent me the DILG report, suggesting I write more about the findings.
The term “informal settlements” is often seen as a euphemism for “squatters,” who in turn are stigmatized as illegal occupants of private property. But the DILG report says that informal settlers on private property comprise only one-third of the total. Another 40 percent are on government-owned lands (including, presumably, those on the University of the Philippines Diliman campus) and 18 percent are in “danger zones,” meaning areas near waterways as well as “roads, alleys, sidewalks.”
Because of the illegal (or extra-legal) status of the occupancy, the settlements can be chaotic, with few regulations on the type of housing, sanitation, waste disposal. To some extent, we can equate the informal settlements with urban slums, mainly because of government neglect. The informal settlers are generally poor, but in any settlement you will find some structures that stand out with more sturdy construction materials, courtesy of household members who are working overseas or who have ventured successfully into businesses.
Despite the chaos in these settlements, residents will often organize and work out mutual help projects and some forms of governance, all the way up to networks linked to politicians. And while the occupants have no titles to their properties, they will come up with systems of “rights” that are even bought and sold.
What got me to write Carol when she came out with the DILG figures was a disconnect between the figures on the informal settlers and the government’s reported poverty incidence levels for Metro Manila. I remember that even back in the 1990s, I was incredulous when the government, based on its own surveys, claimed that the poverty incidence level in Metro Manila was 8 percent. The latest figures are now down to 3 percent.
Through all these years, I have doubted those figures mainly because of all the slum areas in the city. Now we get this government report describing one out of every four Metro Manila residents as an informal settler.
Poor?
Can we say all these informal settlers are poor, which would mean our poverty incidence level for the National Capital Region would be 25 percent?
Certainly, many of the informal settlers should be classified as poor, and would belie the official poverty incidence figure of 3 percent. But I suspect that the informal settlements now include residents who may not necessarily be poor. If they end up in the informal settlements, it is because housing has just become so unaffordable in the NCR and other urban areas.
While Metro Manila’s skyline is now marked by numerous high-rise condos, don’t think that’s all affordable housing. I have my own home, but last year I thought I’d look at condos for possible investment. I was shocked at how high the costs were. I was even rejected at one Phinma condo project, one of the better quality but still (I thought) affordable developments, but it turned out that even my combined UP and Inquirer incomes were considered too low to qualify for financing plans.
The experience reminded me of how, in the 1990s, one of our UP anthropology professors qualified for a Jesuit low-cost housing for low-income families, which provided small lots together with a house. She showed her UP pay slip and the housing administrators said she qualified!
Middle-class buyers who venture into condos or other housing investments often do so with risks. All it takes is one major family emergency to throw off payments. The banks have numerous foreclosed units selling at bargain prices. And when buyers are unable to continue monthly payments, they lose all the previous installments they have made, shattering their dreams for a home of their own.
Rentals are exorbitant too. My former housekeeper went off to Hong Kong to work as a nanny and would send back P16,000 a month, P8,000 of which went to rent a one-room apartment. The informal settlements offer lower rents, but “lower” is relative. Our former family driver, after retirement, built three tiny rooms, each not more than 15 sq m, in his informal settlement house and rents them out at P1,500 each, per month, to supplement his SSS monthly pension. For a minimum wage earner (right now P404 for the NCR), even P1,500 can be a strain, and we are not talking yet about the difficult living conditions—overcrowding, poor peace and order, lack of safe water—posing even more pressures.
Solutions
The DILG report notes that government only has about 32,000 unoccupied resettlements units available, not even enough for the families that live in the most dangerous areas. The National Housing Authority has a Resettlement Plan for 2011-2016 with a target of another 332,000 units. If they do reach that target, it will still not be enough for the half million informal settler families. Considering that the informal settlements grew by 2.1 percent between 2007 and 2010, expect the numbers to swell even more by 2016.
The DILG report recommends that government move into medium and high-rise buildings. It also pushes hard for in-city relocation, pointing out that the previous approach of relocation sites far from the cities ended in higher economic and social costs.
The DILG report also has a “menu” for financing, including use of the private sector, local government unit resources, and tapping into community and household labor. Whatever option is taken, we have to make sure anomalies in public-private partnerships like the Globe Asiatique scandal are not repeated. Moreover, low-cost housing—whether public or private—needs to maintain quality. Even some of the middle-class condo projects I visited last year were appalling with their substandard quality. A friend working for an NGO who had bought a unit described the shoddy construction by saying, “Binastos kami ng developer.” “Bastos” is used here not just to mean disrespect but an actual assault.
“Homeless” has become a relative term in the Philippines, with a thin line dividing those who live in the streets and those who have to live in informal settlements. Having a (leaking) roof over one’s head is not enough; people need to feel safe and secure, with access to jobs, education, health services and recreation. We have to build homes so we can move on to building communities, and a nation.
