Cavite starts housing revolution

By Rita Festin
Philippine Daily Inquirer

GENERAL TRIAS, CAVITE - Being close to Metro Manila, Cavite has become a first-class province and a highly urbanized center whose high growth rate is unsurpassed in the country.

But to meet that high growth, the province has had to contend with the need to provide decent living conditions for its working population. And an ambitious mass housing project is doing just that.

Pamayanang Maliksi is the first mass housing project of the province in a 53-hectare property in General Trias that offers 6,000 low-cost housing units for Cavite’s blue collar workers.

The project is spearheaded by the provincial government in partnership with developer R-II Builders Inc. with P400 million funding from the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Development of Poor Urban Communities Sector Project (DPUCSP).

The Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, as oversight agency of the housing sector, and the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), as development bank, are coexecuting the project.

The groundbreaking was held on March 14, 2008 and as of August, 1,000 housing duplex units have been constructed in the first cluster, of which 509 beneficiaries’ applications have been approved through the Pag-IBIG Fund.

Over 204 homeowners have already moved in, while 188 applications are under process. Buyers are enticed by the spacious roads that match the more affluent housing subdivisions, amenities like a clubhouse and playground for each of the five clusters, and ready drainage, water line and power connections. A public school is also being built within the site.

At least 10 percent of the provincial government’s employees make up the current crop of home buyers since the site is just 10 kilometers away from the capitol. Factory workers in ecozones make up half, a third are employees outside the ecozones, while the rest are teachers, military, self-employed and overseas workers. Most of them are in the P6,000 to P15,000 monthly income bracket, are regularly employed and Pag-IBIG members.

Riza Ferrer, 30 years old, works in a garments factory in Imus that exports children’s clothes to the United States. She moved into her unit on Aug. 29 with her husband, their 5-year-old daughter and her brother-in-law. She was paying P2,300 in the boarding house that they used to occupy and had to contend with a very strict landlady who had no compassion for delayed rental payment.

At Pamayanang Maliksi, she pays a slightly higher amount at P2,365 monthly amortization rate for 20 years. She is the first worker from her factory that has bought a unit here but her coworkers have already expressed their desire to visit and see the community for themselves, especially those who also dream to have their own home.

For Analyn Rillera, 28, she is the 10th in her Japanese-owned car spare parts factory in Dasmariñas town to have bought a housing unit here. She was paying P2,000 monthly rental in a small house with the same size as her new home. Her monthly amortization rate is P2,150 for 25 years. She lives with her husband and mother. She has been trying to conceive for three years now, so her mother hopes that in their new home, Analyn can finally produce an offspring.

Both Riza and Analyn rave about the simple application requirements and quick processing of their papers by the Provincial Housing Development and Management Office. Riza’s application only took two months, while Analyn’s took three months.

The typical duplex unit that they bought has a cash price of P300,000, payable at P2,150 monthly amortization for 25 years, with no down payment and no collateral. Each unit has a floor area of 22.55 square meters, while the lot area measures 48 sq. m.

There will also be single attached units available at P400,000 per unit, or at P2,800 monthly amortization for 25 years measuring 30-sq.-m. floor area at a 60-sq.-m lot.

ADB’s $30 million concessional loan to the DPUCSP project is coursed through the DBP as the conduit. The project provides affordable housing, serviced building sites and microcredit facilities to improve the income and quality of life of the urban poor outside Metro Manila. Other project sites are in Angeles City, Butuan, Lingayen, Pangasinan, Isabela and Tarlac.

“The Cavite site is much more impressive than any other DPUCSP project site,” said Florian Steinberg, ADB senior urban development specialist.

The project has a relending component for site development and secure tenure to qualified local government units (LGU), nongovernment organizations, private sector developers and similar project proponents. It finances the acquisition of serviced plots, construction of new housing units, improvements to existing housing and microenterprise credit facilities. It provides capacity building and project implementation support to beneficiary local communities, LGUs and other project proponents.

Provincial employees wear T-shirts with the slogan “Be part of the revolution” since Cavite has produced many heroes and the entire province is known for its many historical landmarks. Part of their modern revolution is to provide decent mass housing for an even more progressive Cavite for the future.

(The author is a national officer of the ADB.)