(i.e., as possible material for Local Government Unit (LGU) Local Shelter Plan (LSP) consideration)

For the last several decades, some built environment professionals (BEP) have been unofficially espousing the concept of transitional housing (TH), which used to be academically referred to as “halfway homes” (HH) in the 1970s.

The idea was not to assign homes outright to non-taxpayers or to those who pay the least amount of taxes, i.e., since a lot of legitimate taxpayers are also unable to afford decent homes, and could probably be considered the first in line for viable public housing opportunities.

1) The general idea for TH is for the government (national and/or local) to build affordable but quality housing (usually high-density, low- to medium-rise tenements) and assign users to the generated dwelling units for, say, a maximum five (5)-year period, i.e., no promise of ownership transfer nor the privilege of transferring rights, and with the government shouldering all the operation and maintenance (O&M) expenses to assure build and use quality (which could be sorely missing in some of our housing stock, where material and construction methodology failure become manifest in 5 years, becoming an O&M expense headache for the dwelling occupant).

2) Over those 5 years of occupancy, the occupant or occupants must demonstrate upward social mobility (USM) by paying the barest minimum amount of rent or lease for the dwelling unit to help with some of the O&M expenses of the facility, which will still be subsidized by the government (as this is something that legitimate taxpayers who cannot afford decent homes can possibly readily qualify and work for).

3) If no such capability can be shown by the dwelling occupant within those 5 years, they will have to vacate the dwelling to make room for other qualified applicants (who will also be given a maximum of 5 years to demonstrate their USM). The vacating occupants can then be assisted in relocating to their places of origin, to potentially prevent them from becoming informal settlers (IS) in urbanized areas.

4) If USM is successfully demonstrated or attained by the dwelling occupants, then they can perhaps qualify and move up to a better housing program that may potentially include ownership transfer, say after 15 to 20, or even 25, years of amortization at the lowest subsidized rates possible.

5) There could be many variants of the TH program, but the important thing is that the program is used for social upliftment through demonstrated efforts on the part of the assigned occupant to attain certain levels of USM.

6) The driving TH philosophy is that real value needs to be assigned to these dwelling units, as these are perhaps not truly valued by assignees if these are given away freely by the government (i.e., to the very detriment of the legitimate taxpayers who also cannot afford decent homes, and whose taxes also helped fund those very homes being given away for free).

This was conceptualized a few decades ago in response to the sentiments of the latter group, some of whom truly felt disadvantaged by the way the government structured the housing program to primarily benefit those who they felt may have supported the government less.

7) The ones who initiated the concept are still unsure if such a concept can work under existing Philippine laws and regulatory regime, or if a new law could be considered to support such a concept, which may perhaps be an important part of a future transit-oriented development (TOD)-focused housing program wherever land is scarce and very expensive (i.e., mainly medium-rise tenements of 6 to 15 storeys, up to low-range high-rise tenements of 16 to 25 storeys only) that may be best suited to LGUs which are highly urbanized cities (HUCs) and their LSP at TOD sites.

8) It is also hoped that the private sector could somehow be interested in further developing the above concept (with or without attached incentives for the funders), e.g., to help satisfy their balanced housing requirements under R.A. No. 7279 of 1992, or as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, or as part of viable onsite resettlement efforts (ORE). Thank You.