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Social Housing in the Philippines: How NGOs Bridge the Gap
This article is part two of two articles analyzing the condition of social housing in the Philippines.
Despite their best efforts, the government’s ability to provide housing for all has never been assured. From general funding problems to potential political conflicts on who receives these houses, social housing can be difficult to push through in our government. That puts families at risk from being able to receive long-term shelter within this country.
Thus, socialized housing goes beyond an effort for the government to cover its mandate of housing for all. As a mandated and basic human right, the right to housing enables non-government and private entities to participate in humanitarian efforts to provide housing equality.
Non-government organizations (NGO) around the world work alongside governments and the communities themselves to ensure adequate housing for all. Whether through their own initiatives or by helping state programs, their function gives more low-income families access to new homes and shelter that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to have.
To give our readers a better understanding of this, BluPrint Magazine spoke with Habitat for Humanity Philippines’ Design and Innovation Manager Architect Rodelon Ramos to showcase the roles that NGOs and the private sector play in making accessible housing within the country.
Finding Beneficiaries
Habitat for Humanity Philippines utilizes an in-house team to filter through and ensure that the beneficiaries they choose truly don’t have the means to acquire and pay for adequate housing through other means, like a housing loan. They utilize a Community Development model to ensure an inclusive and holistic approach to the matter.
“We have a multi-stage process of family selection,” Ramos said. “Our community development team would undertake that to make sure that the economic profile, the social demographic [matching] the members who are going through qualification screening for housing later on. It entails a very painstaking process of really validating if these individuals or these families would be suitable for the housing program of Habitat Philippines.”
Searching for the Right Sites to Build
In certain cases, the government provides land for specific communities for Habitat to build their project. And in other cases, some communities can already be empowered to seek their own land to build on.
“The families, the organized HOAs (Homeowner Associations) would already take it upon themselves to identify and look for a suitable land for themselves. And when they already have that in place, [we] would coordinate with the landowner, [while] Habitat for Humanity Philippines, with the assistance of the local government, undertakes a full assessment of that site for a socialized housing development,” he said.
Those empowered communities usually identify the project sites they want Habitat for Humanity Philippines to develop and build their houses on. This would cause problems at times, however, due to the need to negotiate with private landowners to bring the costs of acquiring the land down to a feasible amount.
“You need profound negotiation skills to really bring down the cost when you talk to the private land developers, or you try to seek some concessions with the landowner or the local government or possibly form partnerships with like-minded developers.”
The Technicals Behind Each Project
Whether it’s the government or NGOs, all types of social housing are guided by Batas Pambansa 220 (BP 220). That includes specific technical aspects up to the price ceiling of land development and construction for each house. Beyond those parameters, however, Habitat for Humanity Philippines’s approach in designing houses utilize a broader spectrum of inclusive policies to create houses for disadvantaged people.
Architect Ramos said that the current design and planning of each home yields inclusive and green practices that welcome a whole swath of people into the mix. Different design frameworks, like disaster resilience, climate change adaptation, and disability-inclusive development, are worked into the houses they help create.
“We adopt disability-inclusive development when it comes to our housing,” he said. “We adopt frameworks—disaster resilience, risk reduction, and sustainability frameworks—when it comes to making sure that the houses we design and build and hand over to families are able to withstand strong earthquakes, typhoons and what have you.”
Thanks to the different areas and communities they serve, the organization also has experience in crafting a diverse array of horizontal housing developments. The types of land provided to the communities affect the type of housing they receive. Currently, they are also working to develop vertical housing projects to better adhere to the Marcos administration’s policies.
“I think we have built a number of horizontal developments more than vertical developments,” Ramos said. “But horizontal developments, the horizontal housing, would also have different typologies. We have built row houses, single detached houses, [and] duplex houses in a number of contexts and settings.”
Habitat for Humanity Philippines, like the National Housing Authority, goes through similar technical, social, economic and legal due diligence studies to ensure the suitability of a site for long term human settlement. This usually takes three to six months, and looks at the site’s existing conditions and risks, as well as the community’s vulnerabilities, capacities, and development potential to guarantee the maximum amount of safety for the home-partners.
Community-Based Design
The most interesting aspect of Habitat for Humanity Philippines’ approach is the deep involvement and sustained coordination of the residents in helping design their ideal social housing project. The members of the community are invited by Habitat for Humanity Philippines for a participatory design charrette and workshop called Design Natin.
The two-day workshop gives different sectors of the community, from families and single parents, to people with disabilities, senior citizens, and even the LGBTQ+ home partners, the opportunities to talk about how they want these houses—and the neighborhood as a whole—to look like and be.
Design Natin poses both a challenge and an opportunity for Habitat for Humanity Philippines. Of course, they would have to teach the residents how to understand, visualize and map out their own floor plans. This, Ramos said, means that the plans they have don’t “translate into a one-is-to-one scale.” But the activity gives them a better idea of what kind of houses they want to live in.
“When the families get to select […] their favorite layout during that activity, most of the layouts would be [an] open-floor layout. Or there’s a huge preference for flexible spaces, given that they would begin to understand that these kinds of projects would have a lot of space constraints and they have to really fully maximize everything. And that would be translated into the actual designs that they would come up with: open layouts and flexible spaces for their families,” he said.
How These Workshops Illuminate The Community They Want
And then towards the end of the workshop, they lay out best plans that the residents made through what Ramos calls a “site setting out” activity to give people an understanding of how these houses “look and feel.”
The participants of the workshop also give suggestions on the placements of roads, parks, utilities, and other support services, as well as come up with development and community programs within the planned area. Many of these are integrated later on into the final design, budget permitting.
These Design Natin workshops, Ramos said, work as a way of giving the community a voice for the kinds of homes and surroundings they want to be in.
“ We try to facilitate workshops […] to surface the answers to these problems that they already very well know of. We don’t go visiting these communities and [pass] them a report or a paper that [says] ‘hey, these are the answers, these are the solutions to the challenges that you are facing daily.’ The answers are already embedded in the consciousness of these people in these communities. Our approach is to just try to surface these answers, these solutions in a creative collective way.”
Working with the Government
As these are social housing projects, Ramos said that Habitat for Humanity Philippines works closely with the government in every step of their projects. Many examples abound in how the government and NGOs work together to help create houses for vulnerable communities.
For example, the technical due diligence of the site requires data from local government units and risk mapping information from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to properly assess a site. They also receive technical opinions from other organizations like PHILVOCS at the Department of Science and Technology.
The qualified and accredited families receive housing loans from PAG-IBIG to construct the houses, and Habitat for Humanity also works closely with the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD).
The 4PH Program and Social Housing
Even the construction of the houses showcases the necessity of the Philippine government in this endeavor. It goes beyond construction codes and the guidelines provided by BP 220. Ramos said, for example, that their exploration of vertical developments comes from the Marcos administration’s Pambansang Pabahay Para sa Pilipino Program, or 4PH Program.
“Organizationally, we are encountering a still-developing challenge, and that’s building vertically, because the flagship program of the government right now would be the 4PH, [and] 4PH dictates that it will only support housing projects that would build four floors and above,” he said.
“There have been a number of projects that we have to do a pivot from horizontal development to vertical development because there will be some advantages when you accredit your project under 4PH. There will be more coordination, faster permitting, and more governmental support for 4PH-accredited projects. So that’s been our priority as of the moment for new sites, we’re really eyeing them to be built vertically.”
Private and Public Institutions Working Hand-in-Hand
The ability to provide housing for marginalized communities requires the help and full cooperation of the government. With that in mind, organizations like Habitat for Humanity Philippines need to collaborate closely with them to ensure that marginalized communities receive the housing and shelter they are entitled to.
“As a humanitarian actor, it is in our best interest also to go along with the government, [to] go together in the direction they’re taking,” Ramos said. “It’s a very serious and very embedded process of collaboration with the government when it comes to that. These decisions are very crucial for the housing sector. Government factors [in] a lot; they’re a heavyweight when it comes to these decision making that we have to do.”
Ramos does clarify later on that the organization finds other ways to bring social housing to the country: “If collaboration with the government does not bear fruit, [we] find alternative ways to espouse housing solutions that are more affordable and responds to the people’s context.”
Balancing Community Needs and Financial Constraints
Like the government, however, Habitat for Humanity Philippines encounters funding problems in their pursuit for housing equality. Unlike the government, the organization’s funding relies on private donors and corporations, and that requires constant negotiation for all the players in the field: the communities, the government, the contractors, and the material providers.
Sometimes, for example, the preferred housing designs of a community would not be feasible for the area. That tends to be because of the requirements of the site itself, the technical aspects not working out, or due to its expense overshooting the budgetary allocations from BP 220 and from socialized housing loans. In these scenarios, they offer the communities other options that also fit their objectives.
Ramos called it a “balancing act,” to meet the needs and requirements of the people and the financial limitations dictated by law and the income of the families.
“We have to really ascertain that we are able to achieve cost-efficiency and we stay within the allowable budget for housing loans by PAG-IBIG,” he said. “At the end of the day, it would still be tied to how the families would have the financial resources to pay back the cost of that house or that project. But it will also depend on the availability of funding from some partner or from the resources to be mobilized or shared by the [organizations] that we are working with.”
Challenges with Contracting and Developing Social Housing
Despite its role in facilitating socialized housing, the organization is not a developer and thus has to hire out external contractors to bring the project to life. At times, the organization struggles with this from a financial perspective. It’s necessary to ensure the quality of the project, but it increases the cost in the process.
“With our objective of providing affordable cost-efficient homes for low-income, highly-vulnerable people, when we procure contractors, cost can be a little prohibitive. It can be disconnected with how we develop the costing in-house,” he said.
“And sometimes that would affect how we have designed the financials of the project. We have attracted bid[s] that is [higher than] how we were trying to cost it internally. A little problematic because we have to do rounds of negotiations with that contractor to achieve the most efficient and most responsive costing that would respond to the project design and financials that we have developed.”
Their workaround for this, at times, utilizes in-kind donations from suppliers. From roofing to plywood to plumbing and electrical fixtures, it allows them to lessen the costs of a project without diminishing the houses’ designs or livability.
“If we receive them, if they get donated, they can get deducted to the actual contract costs for the awarded contractor and that would help reduce costs of certain budget items,” he said.
Bridging the Gap
At the end of the day, Ramos recognizes that while the mandate for housing equality ultimately rests on the government, the humanitarian sector remains an important actor in making that a reality for vulnerable families in the country.
“Housing is a universal right,” he said. “It’s a non alienable right of everyone to have safe, secure, decent, affordable housing available and within reach of everyone. But that’s fantasy land, right? I mean, housing is presently not accessible for everyone.
“And so, we do understand that in that gap, in that inadequacy, the role of civil society is quite highlighted. That, meaning to say, for that work that’s being left unaddressed, the humanitarian actors in the civil society sphere come in to actually try to solve and contribute to meaningful ways to address that problem.”
Organizations like Habitat for Humanity Philippines or Gawad Kalinga ensure that vulnerable folks don’t fall between the gaps of government service. As social housing remains a necessary aspect of an equal society in an unequal world, their work brings hope that the vision of affordable, decent housing for all remains in reach for people in the future.
Photos provided by Habitat for Humanity Philippines.
Related reading: Sustainable Housing Initiative: Base Bahay and 4P Forge Partnership
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