Buyers of Delfin Lee homes want SC to hurry up

THE HOMEOWNERS associations of two Globe Asiatique subdivisions in Pampanga have asked the Supreme Court to expedite the cases involving the alleged housing scam against their developer.

In a four-page letter to Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno, the homeowners associations of GA’s Xevera project in Mabalacat and Bacolor expressed concern their ownership of their houses was being imperiled by the cases, especially since the Pag-Ibig Fund administration admitted it could not do anything to address their plight.

Through Rolando Santos and Antonio Galura, presidents of the two Xevera homeowners associations, and other officers, the residents lamented that they had suffered collateral injuries because of the cases against GA and its owner, Delfin Lee.

“It has been five years since the so-called housing scam erupted in what we believed was a dream community for us and our families. Today we continue to live in uncertainty and suffer the risk of being dispossessed of homes that we have bought with hard-earned money,” the homeowners said.

“As buyers of homes, we simply relied on a government housing program that we believed was working to serve the interest of the poor. But it seems we were proved wrong. And now we suffer for having placed our trust in the system,” they said.

The association said Pag-Ibig Chief Darlene Berberabe wrote to them earlier this month, saying that it was “regrettable” that the homeowners “got caught in the middle of the lengthy court proceedings.”

Santos and Galura said they elevated their appeal to Sereno as suggested by Berberabe, who earlier rejected their homeowners’ plea to continue payments of their monthly amortizations for their housing loans with Pag-Ibig.

“Officials of Pag-Ibig told us that they could not do anything on our appeal ‘until the Supreme Court resolves legal issues on the cases our developer is facing,’ even if we know that Pag-Ibig already lost in the civil case before the regional trial court [in Pampanga] and the Court of Appeals where it was Pag-Ibig that was found to be liable,” they said.