Osmeña: Government service to realty

Antonio v. Osmeña
Estatements

CEBU City Mayor Tomas Osmeña and Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia are on the right track in the management of their respective local governments’ real estate properties. It is indeed unfortunate that traditional politics has created a win-lose or in most probability a lose-lose situation affecting billions of pesos in government assets.

Serging Osmeña’s 160-hectare North Reclamation Project, planned to be “a city within a city”, suffered a lose-lose situation because of the political interference of then president Ferdinand Marcos in the early 1970s. Let us then be reminded that departments and agencies of the national and local governments are supposed to be concerned with taxation, purchases, sale, management, regulation, financing and stimulation of the economic use of real estate.

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One of the oldest government service branches in real estate is the real property taxation branch. It takes charge of the administration of real property tax laws, like valuing real estate for tax purposes (assessing) and collecting real estate taxes.

The second government service branch has to do with the acquisition, sale, management and leasing of government property. Government has always bought or acquired by condemnation, sold, leased, managed or operated property.

The third government service branch of real estate is charged with administering laws that regulate land use and that govern the kind, quality of construction, and safety of buildings.

The regulation of land use is accomplished by means of planning and zoning ordinances, subdivision regulations, and through housing agencies. Building, fire, sanitary, tenement housing, multiple dwellings and housing laws and regulations enforce healthful, safe conditions.

The fourth government service branch of real estate has to do with the financing of real estate. Although government agencies are not mortgage lenders in the strict usage of the term, they can subsidize low-rental housing construction and operation, and can pledge government credit by directly or indirectly guaranteeing certain real estate real estate loans—directly under the Home Guaranty Corp.

The fifth branch of government service in real estate is concerned with government activities that encourage, stimulate, or regulate the economic use of real estate. Laws and ordinances have been enacted and government agencies and departments have been set up for this purpose. The government has created departments of commerce, industry and economic development which, among other things, encourage and stimulate the economic use of land and the development and preservation of natural resources.

The political feud between Mayor Osmeña and Governor Garcia over the provincial lots located in the City of Cebu is basically due to the presence of informal settlers.

These informal settlers undoubtedly settled without definite legal agreements made with the owner of the lot (government or private), which would have been binding on the informal settlers. There was definitely a lack of political will to perform a government service of managing properties and, likewise, on the private lots, the negligence of private property administrators caused informal settlers to squat on the land. The informal settlers, for political reasons, have organized as the urban poor, including professional informal settlers—people who squat to sell the area for a profit.

These professional squatters, as they should be legitimately called, are quite enterprising in pinpointing vacant and unattended lots along riverbanks, sidewalks, abandoned road lots, foreshore areas, government-declared timberlands and watersheds.

When will our local government officials have the political will to execute the land use laws and ordinances? The rapid urbanization of Cebu’s cities and towns demands for those who are supposed to administer government services in real estate to do their job well. They need to coordinate with the elected officials for the execution of land use laws. Since 1946, our local elected government officials have continuously failed to remove and stop illegal squatting along riverbanks, sidewalks and public access areas.