They said that when Magellan first stepped foot on Philippine shores, all Filipinos became squatters.
The historical roots of this country’s housing problems still haunts the country. In the United States, one of the indicators for its economic performance is based on how many houses were built for a year. This dates back to the boom years after WWII.
In the Philippines, the burgeoning population of 102 million as of the current date give population pressure to land ownership and homesteads. This also competes with available land for commercial, agricultural and industrial purposes.
Resolving the challenge of affordable and sustainable housing has long been a subject of many discussions and forums among think tanks, governments, experts, industry stakeholders, and the non government organizations. But this lingering problem continues to persist.
An estimated 56% of the population lives in rented or even informal housing. This is a stark reminder of the need for housing with increasing population as a backdrop.
Effective solutions to address inadequate housing has yet to be formulated and more so implemented.
According to a paper written by Zaigham M. Rizvi last year for the World Bank, more than one billion people—or one out of seven persons on the planet—are now slum-dwellers. Asian cities such as Karachi, Dhaka, Mumbai, Kabul and Manila have some of the world’s largest slums.
“Asia, which is already facing a massive housing backlog, will soon be facing an even bigger housing challenge—compounded by the deterioration of the existing housing stock and the continuing shrinkage of household size. The housing deficit, with demand outpacing supply, is destined to intensify today’s already-massive housing backlog,” said Rizvi, an expert consultant on housing and housing finance to the World Bank Group.
“Despite government promises to alleviate the situation, most countries are making no progress toward meeting the housing challenge. Thus ground realities are fast deteriorating and are getting complex for urban planners for viable and doable solutions,” he had said in the paper.
The Philippines needs socialized housing owing to the socio-economic conditions not only of its D and E socioeconomic brackets but also from the “C” class or middle class. The country needs to reverse the backlog of 5.7 million units registered last year 2016. That would entail building 2,600 housing units everyday for the next 6 years
“The massive housing backlog in the Asia-Pacific region—made all the worse by the absence of adequate, affordable institutionalized housing finance and the apathy of stakeholders in addressing housing-related issues—requires an assertion of political leadership that goes far beyond political sloganeering. It is imperative that political leadership comes forward, in a determined manner to take on this challenge, by mobilizing urban planners, academic scholars, local governments and regulatory authorities,” Rizvi had said.
This only highlights the need for socialized, affordable housing that are located in non-hazard areas since the Philippines is one of the most disaster prone countries in the world.
