MANILA, Philippines — The Chamber of Real Estate and Builders’ Associations Inc. (CREBA) is urging the incoming administration of President elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to address the massive housing backlog in the country.
CREBA national chairman Charlie Gorayeb said the group is currently finalizing legislative proposals for a comprehensive public housing program and a homebuyer financing assistance program for the next administration.
The proposal forms part of CREBA’s five-point housing agenda that aims to have 500,000 units per year or a total of 10 million homes built within two decades.
According to Gorayeb, homelessness has escalated in the country even as the Constitution has adopted the mandate of undertaking an urban land reform and social housing program for the underprivileged 35 years ago.
CREBA said the housing backlog is now affecting around 6.7 million poor families.
“Myriad problems besetting the housing effort have remained unresolved, the major ones being lack of affordable and effective homebuyer financing mechanisms that targeted the truly underprivileged, inaccessibility of land, over-regulation and bottlenecks in the licensing and permitting processes for land and housing development, especially at the local government level,” Gorayeb added.
Under the new leadership, the housing sector is looking forward to an approach that will bring a lasting solution to the problem.
Gorayeb stressed the importance of the holistic concept of human settlements and the proposition that shelter is one of the 11 basic human needs were first adopted during the administration of the president Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
“It was also during this time that the National Housing Authority, the Pag-IBIG Fund and the secondary mortgage market system were created, and landmark legislations such as the Social Housing Law (BP 220) and Subdivision Buyers Protective Decree (PD 957) were promulgated,” Gorayeb said.
These developments, Gorayeb added, encouraged growth in the housing sector under the then Ministry of Human Settlements.
For his part, CREBA national president Noel Cariño said providing housing for the underprivileged is not only a social and moral imperative for the government, but would also promote economic activity through business opportunities in downstream industries.
With the newly appointed economic team composed of illustrious leaders who are well aware of the problem, he said CREBA is hopeful of garnering support for its recommendations.
“If our country’s economy is to recover speedily from the COVID-19 devastation, to our mind, a truly meaningful, mass-scale public housing program should be the administration’s centerpiece, given housing’s unparalleled capital-intensive as well as economic, tax and labor multiplier effects,” Cariño said.