With almost all jeepneys coming from Cubao already full, commuters had no choice but to wait longer than usual. Visibly bored and wet, some of them noticed—probably for the first time—the people living beneath the busy overpass.
A lanky woman barker—a tout tasked to call passengers onto the jeepneys—attracted the looks of many as she juggled her work with changing the clothes of a toddler.
“I have been living here for 13 years,” Myla Prando explained proudly indicating the highway behind her. “It has been my home since I left Davao del Sur in 1995.”
“Home” for the 25-year-old barker is the streets around Katipunan which Myla shares then with her partner Jimmy. Slightly embarrassed, Myla explained why Jimmy was not here right now. He has been in jail for more than a month after being arrested for a robbery in a nearby mall.
“I also had my share of prison time,” said Myra in a matter-of-fact way. “I was locked up a couple of times for vagrancy. I spent 10 days in jail the first time I was caught; 15 days the second time around.”
Myla and Jimmy are among the estimated 4.5 million homeless Filipinos. The National Statistics Office defines homeless as “households living in parks, along sidewalks and all those without any form of shelter”.
The figure is quite high given that housing or shelter ranks as one of the most fundamental of human rights. Article 25, Section 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone “has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
Of the 4.5 million homeless Filipinos today, 75 per cent are believed to be squatters or illegal settlers in the main urban centers. In Quezon City alone—the largest city in the National Capital Region (NCR) that is greater Manila—200,000 families are described as ‘informal settlers.’
Data gathered from the Quezon City Urban Poor Affairs Office (QC-UPAO) records showed that that 47.6 percent or 95,188 of these poor families occupy private land. More than 84,000 others reside in areas covered by government-owned and controlled corporations.
The top five places occupied by the homeless in Quezon City are sidewalks and open spaces (7, 852 families); areas under the Pasig River Rehabilitation Program (4,117); and properties owned by the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (2,342).
The rest of the urban poor live along creeks and rivers; transmission and old railway lines, bridges and various sites owned by electricity distributor Manila Electric Company (MERALCO) and the National Power Corporation. Others squat in and live off the city’s garbage dumps.
Responding to the homeless problem, Quezon City authorities plan to re-house more than 3,500 families in new areas by 2010. According to the QC-UPAO, nearly 2,000 were relocated over the past six years. Others families have received financial support from the city ranging between PhP 3,000 (USD 68) and PhP 5,000 (USD 113).
According to Noel Muncal of QC-UPAO’s Housing Regulation Office, those who have received this money arrived and settled in the area after the government passed the Urban and Development Housing Act (UDHA) in the early nineties. The main objective of the law is to provide legal shelter at minimal cost to the underprivileged and homeless citizens in urban areas. Muncal insists however that the authorities in Quezon City have, in most cases, extended the resettlement program to include all those who can prove they arrived through until 2003. Given limited finds however and the size of the problem, the resettlement process is slow.
And if some residents have been fortunate enough to be relocated, Myla’s neighbor in Katipunan was not so lucky.
Jocelyn Salendrez, 26, and her family came to Manila from Masbate in 1988 to look for their father. They settled in the district of Marikina and their area became the focus of a government resettlement program in 1995. The family though was overlooked.
“Unfortunately, we were not included because we were not ‘close’ with the head of the association,” she said.
“Only those who have strong connections with the group leaders were relocated. Relatively new settlers were chosen over us. It did not matter that we had been living there since 1988,” said Jocelyn.
Though overlooked, the authorities still demanded they leave the area. Nowhere to live, a friend told them to try looking for a rental house outside Manila in Antipolo. Unfortunately, they have not been able to keep up with the payments and for the past two months have been living along the streets of Katipunan.
Jocelyn sells sampaguita outside the monastery, her only means of income. Her mother peddles eggs as offerings to visiting Saint Claire of Assisi devotees. Jocelyn’s husband, Efren meanwhile is a barker like Myla.
“Given the increase in fares, we all decided to stay here for the moment,” explained Jocelyn.
The family has few belongings to show off save for some cooking pots and a crib for their eight-month-old baby Aika. The 10 adult members of their extended family all sleep on cardboard boxes.
One provision in the UDHA is the Community Mortgage Program (CMP), a financial social housing scheme to assist local and legally organized groups of underprivileged and homeless citizens to own the land they occupy or where they chose for relocation.
Unfortunately none of the residents around the streets of Katipunan have ever heard of the scheme or the groups which implement it.
A World Bank report on pro-poor services in the Philippines found that access to housing programs is very limited and only a tenth of interviewees ever applied for housing assistance. Half of the interviewees said they do not know how to apply with housing programs.
The report also found that government housing assistance benefits mostly those who need it least. About 95 percent of the beneficiaries have been urban households, majority of which are in the NCR.
Perhaps surprisingly, most financial assistance has gone to households classified as “rich and middle-income households,” with only 21 percent of the beneficiaries coming from the poor.
While seven years have passed since the report came out, the situation is very much the same according to Deogracias Espiritu, a QC-UPAO area coordinator.
“It is shameful, but yes, some middle-class families have acquired land under the CMP,” he said.
“If you really look into it, it is really unfair to the urban poor. Eventually, one owner built a two-storey which cost more than PhP 500,000 (USD 11,400). If you can build a house costing that much then you are definitely you are not poor,” he said.
With cases like these, is there still hope for the homeless? Espiritu remains positive that time will come that there will be no squatters in the city and nationwide.
“It is just a matter of political will of our leaders,” he said.
In 2007, Paranaque City 1st District Representative Eduardo C. Zialcita filed a bill which sought to “provide shelter to millions of homeless Filipinos and at the same time address the critical problem of squatting in urban areas”.
The proposed Omnibus Housing and Urban Development Bill of 2007 contains essential provisions covering land and housing development particularly in regard to finance, regulation and administration.
The bill is currently pending with the Committee on Government Reorganization.
“We already have good laws on housing—but these need to be implemented well,” explained Espiritu.
For Myla, Jocelyn, their families and neighbors, life has to go on even if they need to stay below the overpass. “If help will come, then we’ll be grateful. If not, it is okay. We have survived in the past,” Jocelyn said.
It is not a problem for them even if the rain pours hard.
“We were here when Typhoon Frank hit in June,” Jocelyn added. “We had an umbrella, we were fine.” Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project
(The author is a News Safety staff member of the Center for Community Journalism and Development, a partner of the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project.)