THE House of Representatives has passed a measure seeking to create a Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development to address the basic housing needs and requirements of Filipino families.
House Bill 6775, which was approved on second reading, proposed to consolidate the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council and the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board.
Quezon City Rep. Jose Christopher Belmonte, principal author of the bill, said the measure’s approval on third and final reading will be a step towards providing decent and affordable housing to every Filipino family at the soonest possible time and in the least cumbersome manner as mandated under the 1987 Constitution.
Another author, Rep. Winston Castelo, also of Quezon City, said the country needs to develop a holistic approach to the housing sector.
“Decent, affordable housing—one of the people’s most basic of needs but unfortunately, rarely cheap and mostly unavailable,” Castelo said.
Rep. Rozzano Rufino Biazon said that at present, there is an estimated housing backlog of around three to four million housing units in the country.
“While we face a huge housing backlog, it is ironic that there are government housing units that remain unoccupied to this day,” he, also an author of HB6775, said.
The bill’s authors also include Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and Negros Occidental Rep. Alfredo Benitez, chairman of the House committee on housing and urban development.
The bill mandates the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development to act as the primary national government entity responsible for the management of housing, human settlement and urban development.
The department shall be the sole and main planning and policy-making, regulatory, program coordination, and performance monitoring entity for all housing, human settlement and urban development concerns, primarily focusing on access to and affordability of basic human needs.
The bill also proposed that the department shall be tasked to develop and adopt a national strategy to immediately address the provision of adequate and affordable housing to all Filipinos and to ensure the alignment of the policies, programs, and projects of all its attached agencies to facilitate the achievement of this objective.
The Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development shall be headed by a secretary and assisted by four undersecretaries and four Assistant Secretaries to be appointed by the president.
It shall exercise administrative supervision over the following agencies which shall remain to be attached for purposes of policy and program coordination, monitoring and evaluation: National Housing Authority; Home Guaranty Corp.; National Home Mortgage Finance Corp.; Home Development Mutual Fund; and Social Housing Finance Corp.
It shall also establish SHOPCs or socialized Housing One-Stop Processing Centers in the regions which shall centralize the processing and issuance of all required housing-related permits, clearances, and licenses in accordance with Executive Order No. 45, series of 2001 entitled “Prescribing Time Periods for Issuance of Housing related Certifications, Clearances and Permits, and Imposing Sanctions for Failure to Observe the Same.”
The bill calls for the reconstitution of the HLURB as the Human Settlements Adjudication Commission and its adjudication function shall be transferred to HSAC. It shall be attached to the proposed department as its adjudicatory body.
The bill refers to “Human Settlements” as the integrative concept that is comprised of (a) physical components of shelter and infrastructure; and (b) community services to which the physical elements provides support, such as education, health, culture, welfare, recreation, food and nutrition.
It describes “Urban Development” as the process of occupation and use of land or space for such activities as residential, industrial, commercial, and the like or their combinations, necessary to carry out the functions of urban living. It entails the building or rebuilding or more or less permanent structures over land that is often withdrawn or converted from its original use, resulting in the creation of a built environment.
