Housing and tourism

The two other big failures of BBM's administration are housing and tourism.

- BOO CHANCO

BBM recognized the failure of housing by reassigning his appointed housing secretary to help rehabilitate the Pasig River. BBM has not acted yet on the tourism secretary.

A new housing secretary is not likely to make a big difference unless a new concept on how to solve the housing problem is adopted. The new housing secretary is from the construction sector and is highly esteemed in the industry. But the problem isn't construction, it's financing and affordability.

The previous housing secretary made an outrageous target of building six million units, or a million units a year. Of course, he failed. He was still thinking of home ownership, which decades of experience have proved not feasible.

Two years ago, I quoted in this column how an urban planner described the nature of our response to the housing problem: "Current housing backlog is 6.5 million units (and increasing); low-cost estimate of socialized housing units is P500,000/unit (on cheap land away from employment centers, excluding access roads and external utilities; 36 sqm lot and 22 sqm floor area), total cost is P3.25 trillion."

Gerry Choa, a successful property developer and a colleague at the Foundation for Economic Freedom, made this comment: "I think the housing model should be viewed principally as poverty alleviation to work. Home ownership is not the need of the poor urban settlers, just as land ownership in agrarian reform simply makes the poor even poorer."

The mismatch of their income-earning capability to their living expenses is the issue of poverty, Gerry explains. Rental housing near where jobs are available allows better income-generating activities while reducing the cost of living.

What could be done