The Publication of Habitat for Humanity International | August/September 1999
| The Publication of Habitat for Humanity International | August/September 1999 |
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Decent Shelter: A Desperate Dream
- By Pat Curry - As Terry McCormick of Houston, Texas, worked on the house Houston HFH sponsored at the 1999 Jimmy Carter Work Project in Maragondon, he noticed a Filipino man working tirelessly. "Is this your house?" McCormick asked. "No," the man said. "It's only a dream." For seven million Filipino families - nearly half the country's population - owning a simple, decent house is just that...a dream. HFH Philippines estimates that 35 million of the nation's 73 million men, women and children live in substandard housing. The highest concentration of the country's poor live in squatters' shacks in the capital city of Manila. Drawn from the provinces by the prospect of jobs and education, they provide the backbone of the city's manual and service labor force. Against a backdrop of economic boom - high-rise construction is everywhere in downtown Manila - they toil for little more than the equivalent of pocket change, eking out day-to-day survival wages and sleeping in parks, doorways or abandoned concrete pipes.
Their destitution is not from lack of effort, however: Filipinos are accustomed to a life of back-breaking labor. But the average family earns 4,000 pesos a month (about US$105) and could easily spend 85 percent of that just on food, according to Andrew Regalado, national director for HFH Philippines. He explains that even though the government has built low-cost housing outside the city, many of the poor can't afford the extravagance of commuting. They wind up as squatters, living in poverty-ridden areas that hug the waterfront, the garbage dump or railroad tracks. Additionally, the entire country is subject to earthquakes and volcanic activity: The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 on the heavily populated island of Luzon buried villages and impacted global weather patterns for two years. Located in the typhoon belt, the islands can be ravaged by storms any season of the year. Many Habitat family partners here consider the greatest asset of their sturdy Habitat house to be its ability to keep their children safe and dry in the face of a typhoon. Yancy Modesto, a graduate architecture student - whose thesis focuses on housing the urban poor - says the housing deficit in Manila has reached alarming proportions. The most conservative estimate of housing need is 86,000 units annually, while the most the government has been able to provide is 13,500 units a year. Another obstacle is the staggering cost of land, a problem that plagues countries throughout Asia. Real estate in urban Manila commands up to $10,000 per square meter, a rate that rivals the $2 million per acre prices reported in San Francisco, Calif. Ruben Morales, treasurer of HFH Philippines national board of trustees, says the Asian economic crisis has caused the Filipino tradition of bayanihan, where the entire community helps a family build a house, to fade. "Individualism is getting stronger," Morales says, "probably because of the economy. Job insecurity is high here. People say, 'I have to take care of myself first.' " Thus, when Habitat builds a community, a survey of skills is taken of the family partners, who then have priority for paid construction positions. Habitat also is partnering with other agencies to provide job training to replace disappearing factory positions, and micro-lending for entrepreneurial Filipino women to help the families meet the obligations of homeownership. Popular Filipino Sen. Sonny Jaworski, who spent a day at the Maragondon site, says the Habitat model presents the best opportunity to meet a need government cannot - and should not - shoulder on its own. "Government should do something, but you can't exist without community-based organizations," he says. "It's like a farm. You can't have one person do all the chores. This is how the world should exist, with this spirit of brotherhood. It's a great feeling to make a difference in the lives of those close to us." Pat Curry is a writer based in Athens, Ga. She volunteered her professional services to Habitat World during the JCWP in the Philippines. A longer version of this article is available on Habitat's Web Site at http://www.habitat.org/jcwp/99/ Reprinted from Habitat World Magazine, August/September, 1999. This article may not be reproduced in any form without permission. ©1999 Habitat for Humanity International |
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