Part One
DAVAO CITY—The Home Development Mutual Fund (HDMF), more popularly known as the Pag-IBIG Fund, has noted a surge in the housing demand across Mindanao despite the armed conflict in Marawi City. And demand was even higher in the cities near it, the head of the Pagtutulungan sa Kinabukasan: Ikaw, Bangko, Industriya at Gobyerno (Cooperation for the Future: You, Bank, Industry and Government) Fund said.
Pag-IBIG Fund CEO Acmad Rizaldy P. Moti said the agency has already allotted P3 billion in the rehabilitation of the housing units of its clients in Marawi City, where the military operation to retake it and the fierce resistance put up by the remaining fighters of the terror organization, the Maute Group, has turned this city of 200,000 into rubble.
Moti, himself a native of Marawi City, said the siege “fortunately, did not affect the interest of our members across Mindanao to apply for housing loans”.
On the contrary, “there is a huge spike in the takeout of housing loans in Iligan City and Cagayan de Oro City”. Moti also announced in a news briefing here the HDMF is not revising its target of reaching P8.6 billion-worth of the takeout of loans at the end of the year.
“The demand is partly fueled by the moneyed Maranaos who prefer to stay in a safer area, or areas that they feel [are] more safe,” he said.
Talks
ILIGAN City is 37.9 kilometers north of Marawi City and the next bigger evacuation centers outside Lanao del Sur are located in this capital city of Lanao del Norte.
Cagayan de Oro is farther to the northeast of Marawi City and is noted to have the best collection efficiency among the Pag-IBIG Fund areas in Mindanao.
Moti said buying of even five-year-old to 10-year-old houses in Iligan City was brisk, indicating actual demand he described
as “frantic”.
Moti added that a housing project by the construction firm of former Sen. Manuel B. Villar was already opened for takeout in Iligan City. The Pag-IBIG Fund expects more projects to come in these two northern Mindanao cities, he said.
“We would be talking to developers in these areas,” Moti told reporters after a forum among Pag-IBIG Fund clients, developers and other interested parties in the housing sector over HDMF’s first-semester performance
on the takeout of housing loans in the Davao Region and the rest of Mindanao.
Reservation
CURRENTLY turned into a ghost town while the city remained a battleground, the rebuilding of Marawi, at least to resettle its residents, has become primordial for the government housing sector.
Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez has earlier hinted of gathering all construction and hardware suppliers to aid the reconstruction of Marawi City once the government military declares the city safe for the return of normal trade and commerce.
Moti said he notes one particular difficulty in the resettlement program for displaced residents: they obviously have no house to return to.
He disclosed of the plan to request the administration of the Mindanao State University (MSU) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to free up portions of their unused land to settle the evacuees from Marawi City.
Moti said the rehabilitation in Marawi City was likely to post another surge in the takeout of housing loans. However, he said the problem is land ownership, which kept away housing developers from undertaking any projects.
“Even before the fighting in Marawi City, the problem with the area is that many residents are occupying government lands,” he said.
About half of Marawi City’s land area of 8.755 hectares sits on the reservation lands allocated to the MSU and the AFP, according to Moti. The MSU has 1,000 hectares of rolling and flat lands west of Marawi City.
Proposal
MOTI said he would propose to the MSU administration “to give portion of its reservation to the housing settlement for the evacuees”. This he would do in a scheduled meeting with members of the Malacañang-formed rehabilitation Task Force Bangon Marawi.
As of August 29 the government said there were 104,220 evacuee-families, or about 466,000 individuals, said lawyer Jhan Ganda, who was among the evacuees and has worked with a Davao City-based private-donation campaign for the evacuees. Marawi City is one of the few urban centers in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with active Pag-IBIG Fund presence. But this ownership problem remained unresolved.
“Developers would not venture into the areas without titles,” Ganda added.
In the meantime, part of the rehabilitation of its clients would focus on the nonresident workers of MSU, notably the school’s faculty members.
“We would propose to the MSU Iligan Institute of Technology [MSU IIT] to take in these MSU teachers as members of their housing project in Iligan City,” Ganda said. The MSU IIT is among the network of colleges of the MSU system.
Ganda added he and other leaders of Task Force BM would try to persuade San Miguel Corp. President Ramon S. Ang to donate a thousand housing units.
“He [Ang] has done it already, and we hope he would do it again for the Marawi City settlement,” he said.
To be continued
Image credits: Nonie Reyes