The Chamber of Real Estate and Builders’ Associations Inc. (CREBA) is finalizing legislative proposals for a comprehensive public housing program and a homebuyer financing assistance program for presentation to the next administration.
These proposals and program form part of CREBA’s five-point housing agenda which targets the production of 500,000 units per year or a total of 10 million homes in two decades to address the 6.7-million housing backlog.
The group has expressed hope the country’s housing backlog will receive higher priority under the administration of president-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr.
Charlie Gorayeb, national chairman of CREBA, said the housing sector anticipates a cohesive, concrete and well-targeted approach towards a lasting solution to put an end to the problem of homelessness.
Gorayeb stressed problems besetting housing have remained unresolved, the major ones being lack of affordable and effective homebuyer financing mechanisms that targeted the truly underprivileged, inaccessibility of land, over-regulation and bottlenecks in the licensing and permitting processes for land and housing development, especially at the local government level.
Gorayeb said these issues have persisted 35 years since the adoption of the Constitutional mandate for an urban land reform and housing program for the underprivileged.
He said it was during the time of Marcos’ father, former President Marcos Sr., that the National Housing Authority, the Pag-IBIG Fund and the secondary mortgage market system were created, and landmark legislations such as the Social Housing Law and Subdivision Buyers Protective Decree were promulgated.
