The squatter phenomenon

It seems that our local officials are tightly holding onto their ‘treasured’ voters as they continue to pander to the army of squatters who have crowded themselves into Metro Manila. Clearly the past calamities have shown how the poor should have decent housing and how they could benefit in better environments through various government efforts of urban planning and management. These illegal settlers have taken over the cities where even the little ones have extended their playgrounds in major highways and streets. They have began elbowing aside homeowners and other property holders who pay taxes, and by placing unexpected demands on every system in place have strained light, water, education, garbage disposal, sanitation, and police facilities beyond their limits.

The Lina Law (signed by then Senator Jose “Joey” D. Lina), otherwise known as Republic Act No. 7279 or the Urban Development Housing Act of 1992 (UDHA), provides that certain lands owned by the government may be disposed of or utilized for socialized housing purposes. It was signed into law to address the housing shortage of the country.

The problem with the Lina Law is that it allowed the use of government land in the cities. If we truly and sincerely want to help the poor improve their lives, then, we need to bring them to communities outside of the metropolis and give them livelihood programs to sustain their needs. Living in the city just won’t do them any good. They will definitely not be able to contribute to urban development.

The Act lays down the groundwork for a comprehensive and continuing urban development and housing program. It addresses the right to housing of the homeless and underprivileged Filipino people. This law seeks to provide social housing to the marginalized sector by addressing their access to land and housing, relocation, demolitions, and promoting private sector participation in housing.

The law also mandates local government units to provide shelter to qualified beneficiaries and to undertake measures to curtail the activities of professional squatters and squatting syndicates. In addition, the Act also mandates the formulation of a National Urban Development and Housing Framework to guide policymakers in the determination of areas for urbanization and development of concomitant programs to address the urbanization problems.

Thanks to this unwarranted and unbridled “social mobility,” peace and order has broken down, all roads are gridlocked, faucets are running dry, the public school system is awash with surplus of students, and cities and urban municipalities are literally drowning in humanity.

The squatter phenomenon has swamped most urban centers which points to a failure of government to provide livelihood, incentives, security and the proper amenities to the people in our countryside – motivating them to seek the “bright lights” of false opportunity in our major metropolis.

We are living in different times now. Things have changed. Our present condition and needs call for different measures to resolve urban (or city) planning as well as rural planning. If our Congressmen and Senators do not take any courageous steps in this aspect we will forever be waging a war against ignorance and poverty in the very literal sense of the word.

If the President is determined to make this undertaking work, it will work – and the current “tempest” will shortly die down and be replaced by common sense. We’ve a romantic tendency towards anarchy, and any regulation seems to be rebuffed with a knee-jerk propensity to cry “dictatorship”, when what we need is self-discipline and a sense of national purpose.

The task we face is not easy, and the measures to tackle them will sometimes feel irksome, but nothing comes easy in this life and in this world. What the doubters and critics preach may appear attractive, since they appeal to “selfishness”, the most facile emotion to address. But they’re wrong. GMA has a very difficult task ahead of her. She must redirect her energies and her spirit. She must leave a good legacy to our people. And if she does leave such a legacy, there’s no need to “anoint” a successor to carry on or to protect her back. The Filipino people will do so, with enthusiasm and goodwill.

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One of my father’s (the late Max V. Soliven) best friends, Dr. Ricardo Soler, has just finished writing a collection of short stories, entitled, For Starters, which is now available in the bookstores. This is his first work after nearly twenty years of, in his own words, “not writing anything of consequence.”

I remember that Dr. Soler was one of the very few friends my father had during martial law. He was the only one who had the courage to stand by my dad during this dark period. When publishers at that time were too scared to give him a job, Dr. Soler set up the Manila Magazine to give him the opportunity to write again. In fact, it was in these magazines where my dad wrote his best essays.

In his foreword, Dr. Soler writes: For Starters — is a nibble to tempt interest in the larger work I must finish and serve to readers — before the shadows finally consume my being and make me join the multitude that has so unerringly preceded all of us. These stories reflect my impressions of realities that hem in our lives; of how we will survive our frailties, perhaps lessened and weakened, but never crippled beyond recovery. They speak of my intrigue about how we make fact out of fiction we either do not comprehend or have been conditioned to accept and make part of our belief system. In this light, they are simply seeking for a clearer truth.

My dad described Dr. Soler as: a man who hides too often behind a façade of gentle cynicism, a true believer, half-ashamed of the fact, reaching for the stars… the term ‘Renaissance Man’ has been much invoked, in fact, over-used in recent years. But in sum it is the only term that can be mobilized to describe the author… a tilter with windmills, a picaresque adventurer in the field of business, a grown man with the questing heart of a child.