‘Last chance’ for city housing beneficiaries

ILOILO City – The Iloilo City Urban Poor Affairs Office ( ICUPAO) has given erring city government housing beneficiaries 30 days to occupy the lots/ houses awarded to them.

“Eighty percent of them have reached out to ICUPAO already. We are giving them one last chance to make use of the government’s support,” said Jeck Conlu, ICUPAO head.

Notices of violation were sent to some 200 beneficiaries. They risk losing their housing units.

Conlu said ICUPAO will validate their compliance.

“We al s o asked t he homeowners’ associations and barangay officials to conduct their own validation. Thereafter, we will compare notes,” said Conlu.

Some of them claimed moving to their new homes would remove them far away from their sources of livelihood or that the relocation sites were far from their children’s schools.

These beneficiaries have the whole month of April to comply with the ICUPAO order.

The office is pushing for efficiency in the implementation of the city government’s housing program.

Conlu, appointed to ICUPAO l ast November 2016, and City Administrator Hernando Galvez formed a team that will check the housing units and beneficiaries in relocation sites amid the growing backlog of applicants to the city’s mass housing program.

Conlu also said they already identified persons who will compose the Local Housing Board. For now, they are waiting for an executive order from the city mayor for the reactivation of the board – the policy-making

body for the city government’s housing program.

Members of the board should be composed of representatives from the city government, non- government organizations and business sector.

In the last five years, ICUPAO prioritized households displaced by big infrastructure projects like road widening and Iloilo River redevelopment, among others.

This year, the city’s priorities are illegal settlers in private lots with court notices of eviction. But ICUPAO cannot demolish illegal settlements if there are no relocation sites for the displaced.

“We plan to build medium- rise buildings probably next year, i n partnership with property developers,” said Conlu.

But t he l ack of f unds remains a big challenge to fully accommodate over 12,000 urban poor mass housing applicants, he said.