Four community-driven land and housing initiatives within the federation

20 years ago, 300 families evicted from inner-city slums were resettled in what was then a jungle catchment area for Quezon City's reservoir.
Many survived by scavenging at the new Payatas garbage dump nearby. Over time, more families came, children grew up and found work in the fast-urbanizing area.

The community's struggle to buy the land they occupy began in 1993, with the formation of the Golden Shower Homeowner's Association. While negotiations with the land-owner began, the people started land savings, mapped, enumerated and surveyed their settlement and got all the titles in order.

After haggling the price down to 1,000 pesos per sm., they made a down-payment. Tasks now include pushing the slow process of getting CMP loans to pay off the land. From the beginning, all Golden Shower's planning has been carefully cropped to remain within a strict budget of 60,000 Pesos per family (the CMP loan ceiling). That will just cover the land cost, leaving little for building new houses, so the people are also exploring cost-saving house construction techniques using recycled materials.

Their redevelopment plans include only slight readjustments to the existing tree-filled community, which is degrees cooler and feels like heaven after the smoke and stink of the nearby dump. Roads will be widened, plot sizes equalized and space made for a community recycling center.

There are 1,000 families in the Kabalaka Homeowners Association (which means "We care" in the Visayan language), most of whom are very poor squatters from informal settlements around Iloilo. Since 1997, they have saved a whopping 2.4 million pesos towards buying 4.4 hectares of good, inexpensive land they found, located towards the edge of the city, in several parcels. The communities went through the steps of finding out who owned the land, researched the zoning and right of way for all the pieces, and in November 1998 struck a deal to buy the land. Meanwhile, Kabalaka members negotiated with the National Housing Authority for help buying the land under NHA's Land Tenurial Assistance Program. Since then, the community has worked with NHA to survey and subdivide the land into plots, according to NHA standards and the people's community ideas. When the purchase is final, NHA will develop the land and people will build their own houses. 400 families will move in the first phase, and 600 in the second.

Mandaue City has plenty of factories but very little affordable housing for the thousands of workers who keep the city's thriving industrial sector alive.

As a result, the city has a much higher percentage of squatters than in adjacent Cebu, most of whom are forced to live in extremely crowded settlements without access to basic services.

In 1999, federation members in Mandaue's San Roque Parish formed the Visayan Housing Action Group, began housing saving and started searching for affordable land.
They eventually found a 0.5 hectare parcel of land that was close to jobs, markets and schools, negotiated with the landowner to sell it to them for 500 Pesos / sm. and made a swift down-payment from their savings.
The group then found a local engineer to help them draw up a layout plan for their new community which includes a market, basketball court, savings office and guest house.

The association is now in the process of looking for urgent bridge financing to pay off the balance.

The Payatas Scavengers Association has a special land acquisition team that has been looking for potential building sites in or near the Payatas area.

When in 1998 the team found a beautiful 3-hectare hillside site at Montalban, in nearby Barangay San Isedro, they saw a chance to realize their dream of moving out of their squatter settlements and developing their own new community.
They managed to bargain the land price down to an unheard-of price of 150 Pesos / sm., and bought the land, using a combination of their own considerable savings, a short-term loan from friends in the Kabalaka Homeowners Association in Iloilo, and a five-year housing loan from Caritas Manila. Layout and subdivision plans have been designed to follow the natural contours, to reduce costly cutting and filling on the hilly site, and include common deep-wells, a community center, individual soak-pit latrines and cost-saving house construction techniques which incorporate recycled materials from the dump.

The Montalban site will be the first of many relocation projects by and for the scavengers.