But not exactly poor: 2 million live in slums

POVERTY in slum settlements cannot be simply overcome through traditional poverty reduction programs such as cash transfers.

The Philippine government should take regulatory actions that cut cross administrative boundaries, as environmental issues cannot be isolated by geographical and political boundaries, Dr. Marife Ballesteros argued in a book published this month by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

ADB noted that while Southeast and East Asia regions have made major progress in reducing income poverty, living standards for many poor people remain a major challenge due to worsening environmental degradation and increasing vulnerability to climate change.

“Environments of the Poor” was the theme of a conference which the ADB and some 17 development partners organized on 24–26 November 2010 in New Delhi. The papers on Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific at this conference were revised and edited for this publication.

In her paper Slum Poverty in the Philippines: Can the Environment Agenda Drive Public Action?, Dr. Ballesteros described the demographics of Metro Manila which is home to about 2 million slum dwellers or about 16 percent of its population (11.5 million) in 2010.

Dr. Ballesteros writes: Households in slums are not necessarily income poor ... More than 50% live above the poverty line and can spend between US$2 and US$4 per day, but reside in poor environments. The slum-dwellers who live above the poverty line usually make minimum salaries or wages and work casually. They continue living in the slums because there is no alternative shelter in the city and “they cannot afford the cost of travelling from distant, less expensive, peri-urban regions for work and income earning opportunities in urban centers.”

She added that at the same time, not all the poor live in slums. Some are scattered around the city in areas with similar physical environments as the slums — a deficit of infrastructure and an insecurity of tenure.

The study was mainly based on interviews in four slum areas in Metro Manila, and enriched with some secondary statistics.

It also highlighted the following: environment of the slums and how it causes poverty; higher expenditure on basic services; higher health risk from urban environment and climate change; damage to social fabric and mental well-being; damage to lives and property of slum poor.

Dr. Ballesteros concludes: Unfortunately, these problems do not motivate the government to act since the government does not look at shelter deprivation as part of urban poverty caused by the environment. Shelter deprivation is mainly perceived as income poverty. Thus, government programs on shelter are mostly directed to improving affordability of individual households. Less attention is given to settlement planning and infrastructure development. The threat to settlements brought about by climate change are mainly translated into activities and strategies for disaster response rather than effective prevention.

The solution to slum poverty thus involves giving adequate attention to town planning to ensure appropriate land use planning and proper implementation of building codes and environmental laws. The provision of space for housing low-income families and the expansion of urban infrastructure to underserved, informal settlements should be an integral component of town planning.

News Report: http://www.malaya.com.ph/business-news/business/not-exactly-poor-2m-live-slums

Source: http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/pub/2014/environments-of-poor-southeast-asia.pdf

Photo by John Francis Lagman: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jlagman17/514430524

Rehabilitating riverside settlements

Inquirer Opinion / Columns

Commentary : Rehabilitating riverside settlements

By Anna Marie Karaos
Institute On Church And Social Issues
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: December 29, 2009

THREE months after storm “Ondoy” wreaked havoc on Metro Manila, a workable solution has yet to be found for rehabilitating the riverside settlements whose inhabitants suffered the brunt of the floods. The only solution government has put forward so far is to prohibit the informal settlers from returning to their riverside residences and to accelerate the construction of off-city resettlement sites.

But informal settlers have re-established themselves in the river easements in the absence of alternative places where Metro Manila’s workers can find affordable housing close to their sources of jobs and livelihood. Why does government insist on relying on a tired, ineffectual policy? How rational can it be to do same thing over and over again and expect a different result?

Urban planners claim that Manila lost a golden opportunity to re-plan and rebuild itself after the city was destroyed during World War II. The danger of missing on another opportunity to put things right looms again if public authorities fail to come up with new land policies and redevelopment approaches in response to the wake-up call delivered by Ondoy.

How we frame the problem determines what solutions we will find and where we will look for them. If the problem is simply understood as how and where to provide permanent housing for the 80,000 families living on the easements of Metro Manila’s rivers and waterways, resettlement would seem logical. However, urban poverty specialists contend that the real problem is how to preserve the fragile access poor people have to the advantages offered by cities, principally jobs and services essential for survival and upward mobility like health and education. They argue that living in cities is the best self-help strategy poor people have devised to overcome poverty and therefore government policies should be designed in ways that would protect poor people’s access to the benefits of living in cities.

If we accept that the old solution does not work, and by this I mean specifically large-scale off-city resettlement, shouldn’t we begin thinking differently about the “problem” of informal settlements?

As a start, I propose two new ways of thinking.

My first proposition is that finding a solution to rehabilitating the riverside communities cannot be divorced from a city-wide, even nation-wide, reform of urban land policy. We should begin to think not just land use or land management but land governance. Land governance is about linking decisions on the allocation and use of land to social needs and political processes. Land is a finite and social resource that should be harnessed to meet social needs and purposes. Determining what these needs and purposes are involves a political process. If we claim we are a democracy, this political process needs to be inclusive. Decision-making on land uses and what social needs to prioritize must be inclusive both in process and in outcome. When more than half a million Metro Manila families live in slums or informal settlements without legal tenure and 80,000 of them have to live on river easements, there is no land governance. Governance has clearly failed to be inclusive in its outcome.

How does government plan to use the land resources that it still controls? What land laws and policies would be needed to channel private and public land to socially desirable uses? Are these questions being asked at all? Cities are densifying and land prices keep rising. The distribution of urban space will increasingly become more inequitable. Is anyone paying any attention to this problematic scenario? What tenure systems should we encourage to make housing affordable to the greater number of urban residents? Should we insist on the disposition of lands through titling of individual plots? Or can other tenure systems be promoted such as community land trusts, land use rights, rental housing, community leases and usufruct arrangements on private and government-owned lands? These tenure systems have the advantage of providing legal access to land without a heavy financial burden on poor users. The key is giving poor people legal access to urban space, not providing land titles.

What about multi-story housing for urban poor residents? A poor country like Sri Lanka has made it work through land sharing and cross-subsidy schemes.

My second proposition is that poor people are the best resource for finding a solution to making riverside rehabilitation sustainable. In Surabaya and Bangkok, the development of riverside settlements was negotiated successfully by the informal dwellers with their city governments. Official policy shifted from resettlement to redevelopment through the organization of the riverside communities which made a commitment and a plan to upgrade their homes, clear space for riverside roads, install septic tanks and keep the rivers clean. The government took responsibility for building the roads, dredging the rivers and collecting the accumulated waste from the riverbeds. Many riverside communities in Metro Manila have capable organizations which can easily replicate this strategy with the support of their local governments.

We would do well to heed the call of Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, who said in a recent pastoral letter: “It is not enough to simply order people off the waterways. A deep restructuring of our society is called for, starting in the present crisis with urban land policy.” The Manila archbishop presented concrete proposals, including urban land reform, a follow-through on presidential land proclamations, taxation of idle lands and a moratorium on eviction for as long as humane and adequate relocation cannot be provided. He reminded us, in the words of the psalmist, that “unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20091229-244576/Rehabilitating-riverside-settlements

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