The
housing backlog in the Philippines currently stands at 5.5 million
units but is expanding by 250,000 units each year, because only about
150,000 socialized housing are built annually, based on more recent
government data.
But according to housing executives, this is clearly not just a
problem of building enough housing, but rather building houses in
well-planned new communities that host jobs and livelihood activities
outside of already overcrowded cities like Metro Manila.
In the 2014 World Cities Summit hosted by Singapore, the Shell group
of companies unveiled a somewhat troubling study, titled “New Lens
Scenarios,” which identified Manila as an “underprivileged, crowded
city.”
The study described Manila (but it could have been referring to other
Metro Manila cities, as well) as a decrepit city with a high population
density and low GDP per capita, meaning too many jobless people in one
place.
It warned that rapid urbanization results from people flocking to
megacities in search of oftentimes nonexistent jobs and livelihood. Half
of the world’s population live in overcrowded megacities, Shell said.
It is against this backdrop that consumers and industry observers
alike get to appreciate housing developments outside of the megacities
like most of the 17 completed and nine ongoing low- and middle-income
projects of real-estate firm Property Company of Friends Inc. or
Pro-Friends, for example.
Pro-Friends has been in the business since 1999, and it has shown
foresight in focusing its developments in the province of Cavite which,
like Laguna, hosts job-producing economic enclaves.
Take for example Pro-Friends’ flagship development, the Lancaster New
City in 1,107 hectares straddling Kawit, Imus and General Trias in
Cavite. About 14,800 families have owned units in Lancaster since 2007.
With everything that families need like access to churches, schools,
health care and, of course jobs (at the SunTech iPark), Lancaster is
fast-realizing its developer’s vision of becoming a self-sustaining
township.
Shell’s study stressed that “tomorrow’s success will depend on how
well these are managed and how quickly government, business and civil
society improve their collaboration today.”
Reflecting improved collaboration among stakeholders and players in
property development, Pro-Friends this year inked a major
industry-shaking deal with GT Capital Holdings Inc. of the Metrobank
group under which the latter acquired 22.68 percent of Pro-Friends for
P7.24 billion.
The deal, which includes the option for GT to acquire 51 percent of
Pro-Friends within three years, has made the company a tempting target
for attack, which it promptly addressed under the Cybercrime law.
The government has had a bad track record at socialized housing, such
as the BLISS project and its post-Yolanda rehabilitation effort. What
the next government can, thus, do is extend more financial assistance to
people in availing affordable housing in communities where they also
work. While at it, the government should fast track the construction of
mass-transport systems to the provinces, like Cavite and Laguna to
decongest Metro Manila.
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