Solon pushes vertical housing for urban areas

Senator Joseph Victor "JV" Ejercito on Monday reiterated that vertical housing may be the solution for the resettlement issues in urban areas in the country.

During the hearing of the Senate Committee on Housing, Ejercito lamented that informal settler families are common in urban areas because it is more accessible to their workplaces.

"If houses are built just for compliance and living conditions of potential occupants are not considered, a noble cause to provide shelter is bound to fail," said Ejercito, who also chairs the committee.

"ISFs are here because of their work and if we build houses that are far from their sources of income, without basic facilities such as health and education facilities, then they are bound to leave the resettlement areas," he added.

Meanwhile, Ejercito also called on the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development to identify idle lands among the country's urban centers that can host on-site, in-city, and near-city resettlement and community development.

"Here in Metro Manila, we will be surprised that there are thousands of hectares of idle land. It is just that, some are inhabited by informal settler families," said the senator. "We can do it on those lands for the informal settler communities, we can redevelop it."

The lawmaker also asked the DHSUD to prioritize the identification of idle lands in the country's three most populous metropolitan areas, namely Metro Manila, Metro Cebu and Metro Davao, adding that the national government should avoid using agricultural lands for its housing projects.

"We do not want to reduce our productive lands," said Ejercito.

Housing Undersecretary Avelino Tolentino III said the DHSUD is still identifying idle lands from the 16,000 hectares of government land listed in their registry.

Tolentino assured lawmakers that they are now coordinating with Bacolod Mayor Alfredo "Albee" Benitez, who was recently elected as the national chairperson of the League of Cities of the Philippines, to persuade his fellow mayors to assist in the identification of idle state-owned lands.