Tacloban building condos for ‘Yolanda’ victims, migrants
Some 10,000 people can live in public condo units in Tacloban City
The Tacloban city government plans to build 10,000 condominium units for residents who lost their homes to typhoon “Yolanda” and migrants.
Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development Secretary Jose Acuzar has committed the completion of the housing project within the term of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Tedence Jopson, community affairs officer at the City Housing and Community Development Office of Tacloban, has said.
Jopson said the plan is to construct the residential building in the northern villages of the city where the “Yolanda” housing projects were constructed.
“It will be a condominium style of units with amenities like solar energy system, rainwater collection, parking space and multipurpose building,” he said.
“We will no longer be constructing row houses like the “Yolanda” housing but medium rise buildings due to scarcity of land,” Jopson said, adding that Tacloban’s total land area is only 20,710 hectares with a big part of it hills and marshland that are not suitable for housing.
“We are a growing city and the population is increasing. We need to build shelters to cope up with this trend,” according to the official.
Jopson said Tacloban’s night time population is around 256,000 but this shoots up to almost one million during the day when students and workers from other towns are present.
Regular meetings with other agencies involved in the project are now ongoing in preparation for the construction of the pilot building, he said.
Jopson said the city initially asked for only 3,000 condo units but Acuzar pushed for 10,000 units to cover for the undelivered housing units by the Aquino administration.
According to Jopson, Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez asked for 28,000 housing units for those who totally lost their houses during typhoon “Yolanda” but then President Benigno Aquino Jr. only approved 14,000 houses.