City allots P25M to provide shelter to homeless people

The Cebu City government will be working on giving its homeless people a decent shelter above their heads in the next five years.

Councilor Alvin Dizon, housing committee chairman, said yesterday the city government would start this vision by appropriating P25 million in the 2012 budget for the improvement of urban poor housing sites.

Another P10 million will be allocated for the establishment of shelter sheds especially for the victims of demolition.

Dizon also cited the P78 million loan from the National Housing Authority that Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama could use to further develop its socialized housing sites

According to 2007 data, the city has a population of at least 791,000 people of which 58,712 families are informal settlers.

Quoting data from the local housing board, only about 39,000 or 67 percent of the city’s informal settlers have availed of socialized housing.

About 25,868 remain without a home of their own.

Dizon said that the city was experiencing housing “backlog”.

Dizon, however, said he was confident that the city would be able to address homelessness by 2016.

He cited the city’s passage of its shelter plan and other shelter-related ordinances for his optimism to address the problem.

“And there will be no more demolition without any relocation,” Dizon told urban poor leaders in a forum held yesterday afternoon at the Del Mar hall of the legislative building.

The forum was part of the urban poor solidarity week celebration.

Dizon said that since the Mahiga Creek demolition where charges were filed against Mayor Micheal Rama, the city government had been more careful in implementing demolitions.

Dizon also assured that the City Council would closely monitor the implementation of the P25 million site development for urban poor housing site to make sure that the money allocated for it would go to its intended purpose.

He said the P10 million shelter shed outlay would need the approval of the City Council.

He said the council would want to know how the program would be implemented and who would benefit from it. /Doris C. Bongcac, Chief of Reporters