Larry Jamora’s declaration of his mayoralty bid last Friday marks an important milestone in the struggle of the urban poor in Iloilo City for land, housing and justice. It was the first time in the history of the city politics that a candidate signed a covenant with the urban poor, committing to attend to their plight once elected mayor. Candidates in the past were heard to have promised to provide shelter and jobs to slum dwellers but no one has kept their promise so far. The urban poor are still poor and deprived of basic services like housing, clean water and healthcare.

A recent census by the Iloilo City Urban Poor Affairs Office (ICUPAO) found out that the city has 16,574 informal dwellers, 60 percent of them are settled along the coastal area in Molo Boulevard down to the city boundary with Oton town. Time and again, their problems have hogged campaign speeches just to get the backing of this vote-rich sector. Could Jamora be any different from those candidates who made promises but none has been fulfilled?

“I promised nothing special. All I made was to make a commitment to implement the law on urban development and housing. Isn’t that what the mayor is supposed to do? Implement the law?” Jamora, the presidential adviser on water, tells a news conference after declaring his candidacy for the city’s top post with the backing of some 100 urban poor organizations affiliated with the Urban Poor Council of the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC), the body tasked to implement the government’s social reform and poverty alleviation programs.

A copy of the covenant, titled “Land, Housing and Justice”, confirms what Jamora said. It simply says he, as a candidate, pledges to support the full implementation of the pro-poor policies of Republic Act 7279 or the Urban Development and Housing Act (UDHA) of 1992, including the fast-tracking of asset reforms initiatives, immediate rehabilitation of resettlement sites in flood prone areas and provision of basic social and infrastructure services.

The law provides, among others, that the National Housing Authority (NHA), together with all local government units, shall jointly identify sites for possible socialized housing development. It further says that the NHA, with respect to lands belonging to the national government, and the local government units with respect to lands within their respective localities, shall coordinate with each other to formulate and make available various alternative schemes for the disposition of lands to the program beneficiaries, which shall not however, be limited to those involving transfer of ownership, but shall include lease with option to purchase, usufruct, or such other variations.

The law guarantees security of land tenure for socialized housing beneficiaries, and decent shelter for the underprivileged, and designates local government units as implementers of social housing programs. With their participation, the law wants LGUs to be more responsive to the housing needs of their respective communities. The success of the socialized housing program is dependent on the LGU leadership’s management of important details on social housing and welfare, community development, people’s participation, resource mobilization, and partnership among its stakeholders.

One beautiful provision of the law is the Community Mortgage Program (CMP), which assists legally organized associations of underprivileged and homeless citizens to purchase and develop a tract of land under the concept of community ownership. The primary objective of the program is to assist residents of blighted areas to own the lots they occupy, or where they choose to relocate to and eventually improve their neighborhood and homes to the extent of their affordability. If this scheme is tapped to its fullest potential, it will not only provide secure tenures to informal settlers but free the city government from the burden of accessing bank loans to buy relocation sites and pay for their interest.

Over the past years, the Iloilo City government has spent millions of pesos in acquiring 59 hectares of land for its 13 existing relocation sites. Its relocation program, however, has been marred with irregularities where, it has been reported, that six in every 10 occupants of the city-owned relocation sites are not qualified beneficiaries. Had the city government only adhered to CMP, this problem would have been avoided because it is not a dole-out program. The problem with a dole –out program is that some of those who are close to politicians become beneficiaries even if they are not qualified beneficiaries.

Because of the CMP, there are a number of community associations in Iloilo City that have already received their Certificates of Eligibility for Land Allocation (CELA), the document that gives the beneficiaries the right to occupy and introduce improvements to their respective home lots. These include the MV Lot 62 Community Association, Barangay Bonifacio Tanza Urban Poor Association, Kaayuhan Association, MH Del Pilar Association, and the Barangay San Vicente and Santa Fe Homeowners Association. The CELA is one of the prerequisites for them to obtain a land title for the occupied lot. It will assure them of security for the property.

Larry Jamora says that all the city government has to do is to replicate the experiences of these community associations that have successfully utilized the full potential of Republic Act 7279 to their advantage. “The key here is replication,” he says. “All we need is to learn from best practices on how things are being done because the law is already there, waiting to be implemented. At the end of the day, we will realize that we really don’t need a platform of government when we seek an elective position but simply to commit that we will implement the law for the benefit of our constituents.”

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