QC TO START BUILDING HOUSES FOR THE RESPONSIBLE POOR

Quezon City government will formally start the socialized housing projects for the city’s informal settlers in two relocation sites – one in Payatas and the other in Kaligayahan – in a simple groundbreaking ceremony during the commemoration of the birth anniversary of President Manuel L. Quezon on August 19 (Friday).

QC Mayor Herbert M. Bautista will lead city officials in the groundbreaking ceremony, to which representatives of PAG-IBIG, and the project developers – the Phinma and Habitat for Humanity – have also been invited. Also gracing the occasion will be Vice President Jejomar Binay, House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, Jr. and Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa.

Phinma is set to construct more than 800 housing units in the Arce Property in Barangay Kaligayan. In Payatas, the Habitat for Humanity will build almost 400 units in the Oviedo Property.

The QC government has chosen August 19 to jumpstart the socialized housing project which is one of the priority projects of Mayor Bautista to fulfill one of President Quezon’s dreams of giving shelter to poor families as part of his advocacy for social justice.

Secretary to the Mayor and QC Task Force Housing Chairman Tadeo Palma revealed that teachers, especially those teaching in Payatas like in Justice Cecilia Munoz Palma Elementary School, will be the first batch of beneficiaries of the socialized housing project to be developed by Habitat for Humanity in the area.

Palma said that Mayor Bautista indeed wants to fast tract the development of the city’s big socialized housing projects, the first ever in the history of Local Government Units (LGUs), to attain the Bautista administration’s pro-poor agenda of providing decent resettlement areas for the city’s underprivileged residents.

The QC socialized housing project is a public private partnership (PPP) which President Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III is pushing in line with his Matuwid na Daan advocacy.

“The problem of poverty and informal settlements in QC is huge. But, we can help make this challenge manageable through the pathways of collaboration and partnership,” Mayor Bautista said.

According to QC urban poor affairs office head Ramon Asprer, there are 10,000 to 15,000 informal settlers who are now affected by a series of demolition and relocation in the city that will transfer those occupying the danger zones such as sidewalks, roadways, waterways, under transmission lines and on water pipelines, to safe areas where decent housing units are being built for them.

Asprer said families who were affected by the demolition will be given three options to choose from; first, to resettle in the QC’s socialized housing units either in Payatas or Kaligayahan; second, and to avail themselves of the relocation site offered by the National Housing Authority in Bulacan or Montalban; or third, the “Balik Probinsya Program.” Maureen Quiñones, PAISO