Philippine Urban Poor Federations Unite to Confront Housing Injustice
After three decades of struggle, thousands of urban poor gather in the Philippines to reignite campaign for slum improvement.
Cebu City, Philippines
Tired of being criminalized, marginalized, and living with their homes under constant attack, an estimated 2,000 members of the Urban Poor Alliance (UP-ALL) celebrated Philippine Independence day last month with a lively and dynamic gathering in Cebu, the country’s second largest metro-area. Their aim was to set out a new vision on how the local and national government should combat urban poverty.
Their solution is strait-forward: “Don’t build unaffordable houses, make inadequate houses livable. Don’t build new homes, upgrade our existing ones.”
With cheers and chants, the assembled delegations – each wearing the bright colors of their individual neighborhood association – celebrated their collective achievements in recent months: security of tenure achieved for over 100 families in the metro area, successful negotiations with the city to improve street lighting and sanitation, and a new case filed against the city to hold them accountable for providing relocation to families recently evicted.
The hall rang with applause as Gemma Rosacena, President of the Alliance, reminded the audience of their purpose in coming together: “We are here to listen to each other’s stories, cry out so the needs of our families are heard, to act so that we change these conditions!”
UP-ALL claims to represent over 33,600 families across Metro Cebu spread throughout nearly 500 individual neighborhood associations. Most of these communities are informal settlements erected on government land and are made up of shacks constructed by families out of corrugated iron sheets and spare lumber. Their practice of organizing in neighborhoods to negotiate with government officials like this dates back to the height of Martial Law in the 1980s under dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Originally formed as a type of mutual aid to protect against wide-spread evictions and police violence, these neighborhood associations flourished as Martial Law ended in 1985 and Marcos fled the country. With the return of democracy, these associations exploded in popularity and became a powerful tool for the urban poor to lobby for improved water and sanitation infrastructure, electricity, and security of tenure without fear of reprisal.
Over the past four decades these federations, still built and led by the members of the community, have worked with government officials to allocate billions of dollars in the development of socialized housing. They have also passed landmark legislation that stipulates no community can be evicted by the government without adequate relocation, and in the process developed thousands of new neighborhood associations throughout the city.
“The transformation has been incredible,” says Francisco ‘Bimbo’ Fernandez, founder of Pagtambayayong, an organization in Cebu that funds and trains community organizers to support neighborhood leaders.
Fernandez, 73, began organizing during the early years of Martial Law, working with community leaders to build some of the first Urban Poor Federations. Work for which he was later appointed Director of the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor by President Corazon Aquino (the first democratically elected leader since the fall of Marcos).
“Tens of thousands have been able to acquire permanent, quality homes, save money, and send their children to school,” says Fernadnez. “Now those children have graduated and their children are reaping the benefits of what their grandparents fought for.”
But since the election of President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 and his successor Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos (son of the former dictator), the national government has become less willing to engage with grassroots people’s organizations like UP-ALL.
“We have seen the government turn away from addressing the needs of the people and towards profit,” says Fernandez.
Community organizers say the government's solution to the Philippine’s housing problem is a prime example: developed without the participation of the Urban Poor federations, it prioritizes building high-rise, high density buildings where communities can be relocated.
UP-ALL leaders, however, say the policy pays more attention to the needs of developers than the needs of the poor. Where this policy has been piloted, most families have abandoned the new buildings within a matter of months since many cannot afford to live there. With the average daily income in these communities of ₱80 ($1.37), the ₱3000 ($60) a month rent that the government would require is simply beyond reach.
Instead, they want the government’s help upgrading the housing where people already live by building three to six story apartments that are much more affordable and enable people to keep their jobs in the area. Community advocates point to the success of this strategy in Indonesia’s largest settlement communities and in those areas where communities have already applied in Cebu.
The Pagtambayayon community organizing staff with Fransico 'Bimbo' Fernandez to my right.
Most importantly, community leaders say, the government must abide by the law when it comes to evictions.
Nubilardo Diajamos, 47, is one of the main organizers of the Independence Day assembly and community leaders calling for better accountability based on his personal experience: “July, 2021 was when they tore down my home, where I had lived for 40 years.”
Despite a federal law requiring that all victims of such evictions receive relocation elsewhere, Diajamos says all his family received was “a three months housing subsidy.”
As a result, Diajamos and his family were forced to move five times in the next two years, in search of a place they could afford. “I was quiet for a long time,” he says. He hoped the government would uphold their commitment. But in December 2023, he was done waiting. He sought out the help of Pagtambayayong.
Pagtambayayong’s community organizers helped him unify his neighbors and formally establish a neighborhood organization that could deal directly with the government. “Together… I asked my fellow victims of demolition if they wanted to file a case. I [said] let’s get together so that we have unity and courage. If we have unity, the government will hear us.”
Within the first week of filing the case, after two and a half years of waiting, the government approached Diajamos’ community for a meeting to settle the matter. They are currently in negotiations.
June’s Independence Day assemblies were only the latest events to demonstrate the growing desire of everyday people in the Philippines like Diajamos to reassert their voice in government and ensure their representatives take action on the very concrete needs facing Philippinos.
Drawing on a long lineage of grass-roots community organizing, Filipinos are once again pushing for a people’s agenda at a time when politicians are more hostile to ‘interference’ from civil society than at any point since the end of Martial Law.
Diajamos put it pragmatically when asked to express the message they wished to send with their independence day rally:“We are not against development, it is a part of civil society. But when the city is doing civil development, please include us, the people, the families, in making the decisions.”
UP-ALL President Gemma Rosacena (center) with Nubilardo Diajamos to her left.
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