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One year after, less than 1% of Yolanda survivors given permanent homes


Weeks before the first year anniversary of one of the worst natural disasters to have hit the Philippines, only 142 households or less than 1 percent have been relocated to permanent shelters out of the hundreds of thousand families displaced by Super Typhoon Yolanda, officials said Tuesday.
 
In a roundtable discussion organized by Oxfam on Tuesday, Cecilia Alba, secretary general of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, disclosed that about 250,000 families need permanent housing after the super typhoon raked their homes on November 8, 2013.
 
The permanent housing needs were spread across six regions in the country. 
 
Interestingly, the province of Iloilo has the largest requirement of 40,000 units.
 
Of the overall need, National Housing Authority (NHA) assistant general manager Froilan Kampitan revealed that only 142 families – or 0.06 percent of the total – have so far been given a permanent abode. 
 
They were primarily residents of Tacloban City and Tanauan town in Leyte.
 
The government has not yet transferred the completed housing units to the Yolanda victims, because they want to provide the recipients with the peripheral facilities like schools and road networks, and livelihood programs that will come from the Department of Trade and Industry, Kampitan explained.
 
Permanent shelter was not given priority, with government efforts focused on relief operations and temporary shelters, according to the NHA official, saying the local government only took concrete steps to providing permanent shelters in the middle of the year.
 
To date, about 35,000 housing units are under construction – including 1,600 units in Tacloban City, one of the areas hardest hit by Yolanda. 
 
The number of units that are expected to be completed this year is 1,000, Kampitan said.
 
On first year anniversary of the killer typhoon, the government is targeting to turn over about 500 permanent houses to the survivors. 

 
Housing specs
 
Oxfam's Alba disclosed that the government has to procure about 1,067 hectares of lands to meet the permanent housing needs of the affected families.
 
One hectare of land is needed to accommodate 150 units.
 
In other words, P75.678 billion is needed to buy lands and build the houses.
 
The types of houses the recipients will get are called "loftable rowhouse" that means resilient to various forms of natural and man-made hazards, Alba explained.
 
Each unit sits on a 40-sqm lot, with the ground floor having a 22-sqm floor area, and an upper floor of 11 sqm that could be used as sleeping quarter.
 
The government is allocating P290,000 for each unit, broken down as follows:
 
  • Land acquisition – P10,000

  • Land development – P85,000

  • House construction – P195,000
 
NHA has yet to decide on how much premium would be shouldered by the recipients.
 
"Right now, we are not talking about any amortization," Kampitan said.
 
Dennis Calvan, executive director of the NGOs for Fisheries Reform, said the 40 sqm house is inadequate. 
 
"'Yung standard requirement, medyo maliit 'yung 40 square meter para sa bahay. 'Yung mga fisherfolk, they prefer 60 to 80 square meters," he said. 
 
"'Yung sa row-house design, hindi nila ma-imagine kung paano titira roon kasi socially and culturally, sanay sila sa single detached 'yung design," he added.
 
Housing hurdles 
 
The biggest hurdle to providing permanent resettlement to typhoon victims is land acquisition, the stakeholders noted during the roundtable.
 
Apart from securing geo-hazard clearance from the Mines and Geoscience Bureau, the land should also be a titled property. These are the things why they are having problems identifying lands to buy, according to the NHA official.
 
"Buying land is a problem. That is our priority. The government can't buy lands that only have tax declaration. So, ang priority namin is titled properties to secure the land tenure of the informal settlers in a safe zone," he explained. 
 
Out of the 4,000 hectares of land earlier identified by the Department Environment and Natural Resources, only 20 hectares were deemed suitable for housing, Kampitan said.
 
'At a very fast pace'
 
Undersecretary Danilo Antonio of the Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and Recovery claimed that the recovery phase of the Yolanda rehab "is moving at a very fast pace."
 
A former real-estate developer, Antonio explained that developing lands for permanent shelter in less than a year was a big step, considering the gravity of the calamity that struck through Central Philippines. 
 
Property developers usually take 20 year to plan for and finish and project, he said.
 
"Things are really picking up… It just does not seem fast enough," he added. – VS, GMA News
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