Nograles: New rent control law needed to protect urban families

A new rent control law is needed to protect millions of house and apartment renters from the effects of the global financial crisis, Speaker Prospero Nograles said yesterday.

Nograles stressed that rent control is one of the social parachutes that should remain in place to help millions of urban families that still cannot afford to buy their own homes.

“It’s already bad enough that many of our Filipino families can hardly put food on their table. An expired rent control law can mean additional hardships for our people. We need this rent control law,” he said.

Nograles said he would file a bill as a counterpart to the measure filed by Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri seeking to extend rent control for three more years, from Jan. 1, 2009 to Dec. 31, 2011.

The rent control law expired last Dec. 31.

Zubiri urged the House of Representatives to file a counterpart measure, which he said, would avert a crisis that could befall families renting places.

“There are at least 1,542,538 families who live in rented dwellings… They need protection from skyrocketing rent and unreasonable ejectments,” Zubiri said in citing the 2008 National Statistical Coordination Board data.

Zubiri said the Rent Control Law extension would also keep the viability of the small mom-and-pop apartment business by allowing the reasonable cap of 10 percent on yearly rent increase.

The extension would make a winner of everybody - those tapping the business opportunity and those forced by necessity to rent, he said.

Zubiri claimed he had the support of several lawmakers, including Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, chairman of the Senate committee on urban planning, housing and resettlement, to extend the Rent Control Law.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. also supported Zubiri and said Congress must help the less fortunate families without their own homes. Pimentel though conceded there might be some lawmakers who might oppose the extension of the law.

“So it might be difficult to have it extended but we will try,” Pimentel said.

Parañaque Rep. Eduardo Zialcita, vice chairman of the House committee on housing and urban development, opposed the extension of rent control law.

He said rent of up to P10,000 a month has been frozen for more than 10 years now.

Zialcita pointed out families that have been renting for the past 10 years can avail themselves of the government’s low-cost housing program and pay less than P10,000 a month.

He noted that interest rates for housing loans from the Pag-Ibig Fund are now very low.

Nograles said while he agreed with Zialcita, low-cost housing sites “are still inaccessible so I think we are not ready to completely dismantle the rent control law.” – Jess Diaz, Aurea Calica