Dignified lives come with owning home
Hope for Riverside HOAI continued to grow as SHFC made available a condonation program for delinquent accounts which the association availed straight away
Photograph COURTESY OF SHFC Owning home a legacy Losing a loved one is never easy, particularly for a parent who buried a child. Back in 2010, Mary Anne Anat was a grieving mother struggling to comprehend the sudden death of his son. What started as a sense of loss for the 57-year-old turned into a passion of keeping her son’s memory alive by fulfilling his dreams of having his own land. A decade later, she is finally living that dream.
Eviction and demolition are constant threats to urban slum dwellers of Antipolo, Rizal.
While families rent and built makeshift houses by the riverbank, with pieces of wood and metal keeping them above the waterway.
With the endless struggles brought about by living insecurely, pursuing a safe place seemed like the best decision for those living in Barangay Dela Paz.
Residents sought help from the Antipolo City Urban Poor Affairs Office, or UPAO, to guide them in forming a home owners association and in going through the Community Mortgage Program, or CMP, application processes.
Reynaldo Sabanal, who back then was a renter in the area, recalled the story from 1992.
"Sinabihihan po sila dati ng UPAO na itanong sa landowner kung ipinagbibili niya 'yung lupa doon na pwede naming malipatan. Kaya 'yun po ang ginawa nila at pumayag naman po 'yung may-ari kaya tuwang-tuwa po kami," he said.
Full of hope for a better and brighter future, these informal settler families arranged themselves into a formal organization and became the Riverside Homeowners Association Inc.
They pushed ahead with their CMP application, which was then under the National Home Mortgage Finance Corp.
Handling finances proved to be a challenge for the association as it became tainted by fraud and irregularities. Riverside HOAI is not immune to this phenomenon.
Access to funds without much liquidity presents an impulse that some former officers couldn't resist.
Corruption a hurdle
Unpaid amortizations, fund mismanagement and other forms of corruption continued on such an enormous scale that by 2011, the HOAI was only left with P1,002 in funds leading to instability and mistrust of members.
Fortunately, 2011 was also a year of change: A time to elect a new set of officers and another chance for their organization to be better.