The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved the bill creating the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHUD), one of the priority measures identified by the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (Ledac).
Voting 193-6, members of the lower chamber passed on third and final reading House Bill (HB) 6775 seeking to address the worsening housing problem in the country. The bill will be transmitted to the Senate for its own deliberation.
Rep. Alfredo A. Benitez of the Third District of Negros Occidental, chairman of the House Committee on Housing and Urban Development, said the HB 6775 will not only deal with the physical element of housing, but also provide the necessary link to community services and components, such as education, health, culture, welfare, recreation, food and nutrition.
He added the agency 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 the access to and the affordability of basic human needs.
The lawmaker also said the new housing superbody shall develop and adopt a national strategy to immediately address the provision of adequate and affordable housing to all Filipinos and shall ensure alignment of all the policies, programs and projects of all its attached agencies to facilitate the achievement of this objective.
Under HB 6775, the agency will “focus on building communities and habitats in both rural and urban areas.”
The new housing department will be created through the consolidation of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council and the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB). The department shall act as the primary national government entity responsible for the management of housing, human settlement and urban development.
Under the measure, the functions of the HLURB shall be transferred to the proposed Human Settlements Adjudication Commission.
The National Housing Authority, Home Guaranty Corp., National Home Mortgage Finance Corp., Home Development Mutual Fund, Social Housing Finance Corp. and Human Settlements Adjudication Commission will be attached to the housing department for policy and program coordination, monitoring and evaluation. All these agencies shall continue to function according to existing laws and their respective charters.