THE Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD) is seeking additional funds to build more houses for informal settler families (ISFs) and those in need of low-cost housing units given the importance of having one’s own shelter particularly during pandemics.
In a presentation at the Senate Finance Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, DHSUD said it is requesting for an additional budget of P12.557 billion, nearly three times the budget proposed by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).
The DBM had only recommended a budget of P3.68 billion for the housing sector. The amount represents just 5.17 percent of the P77-billion budget that DHSUD was hoping to acquire for its projects and programs for next year.
“The DHSUD budget just represents 0.08 percent of the total national budget,” Senator Francis Tolentino stressed. “It has been stressed over and over again that the first line of defense against Covid-19 is really your house. How can you have a lockdown if you don’t have a house of your own?” Tolentino said.
In a presentation, DHSUD Planning Service chief Mylene A. Rivera said the additional funds will be primarily used for resettlement assistance of NHA to local government units (LGUs) and indigenous peoples as well as the Community Mortgage Program (CMP) of the Social Housing Finance Corp. (SHFC).
Rivera said the LGU assistance for resettlement will amount to P5.947 billion while the CMP will cost P5 billion.
Around P1 billion of the additional funds will be used for the Marawi Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Recovery Fund Program and some P200 million for the operationalization of DHSUD central and regional offices and establishment of Housing One-Stop Processing Centers (HOPCs).
The requested additional budget will also finance the P400 million worth public housing assistance of the DHSUD. This program provides emergency financial assistance for disaster affected families and land acquisition for resettlement/socialized housing and rental subsidy.
“The [proposed] budget of NHA can only finance two programs which is the resettlement of ISFs affected by the Supreme Court’s mandamus to clean up the Manila Bay area, as well as the emergency housing assistance program; all the other programs of NHA are unfunded. In the case of the SHFC, they have not received any budget for their CMP even in 2018 and 2019,” Rivera said.
However, in a statement, the DHSUD said lawmakers have expressed support for raising its 2021 budget. Senators Tolentino, Cynthia Villar, Nancy Binay and Christopher Lawrence Go all supported a higher budget for the housing department.
Tolentino recommended that all budgetary allocations spread out in several different departments be transferred and incorporated into DHSUD, a move which he described as “administratively logical.”
Villar said the increased budget is needed by NHA, one of DHSUD’s key shelter agencies, to boost programs with regard to establishing relocation sites for informal settlers in the National Capital Region. Binay, meanwhile, lamented that while DHSUD was already a department, given the low budget given to the agency, it is still treated as a council.
Further, Go said raising DHSUD’s financial assistance to socialized housing programs and increasing the number of pre-developed or transformed slum communities and urban centers is paramount at this time.
DHSUD Secretary Eduardo del Rosario had stated that such a low budget allocation will definitely have an adverse impact on the department’s operations for 2021.
He said DHSUD will also require additional funding to accommodate an expected rise in terms of hiring employees, establishing one-stop processing centers for housing concerns and boost the department’s anti-Covid-19 response.