BLISS-type housing planned in Davao slum area

Saturday, 02 October 2010 09:30 Manuel T. Cayon / Reporter

Davao City–A group of developers under the Chamber of Real Estate Builders Association (Creba) has been discussing with the city government a plan to put up several midrise and low-cost condominium buildings in a slum area in downtown both for the slum dwellers and the workers.

Carlos Vargas, president of Creba-Davao City chapter, would not divulge yet the supposed area of the BLISS-type project, but indicated that the Davao City Planning Office has already identified it.

The area would cover 40 hectares of land mostly inhabited by squatters, and Vargas said he has already started talks with the landowner. “We would not name the place yet, because we don’t want to create more squatters now in the place.”

The project would involve putting up several buildings of about four to five stories, and the number of units would depend on how much land the landowner would allow them to develop.
“This would be a green building. We would use bricks, which are resistant to heat, and we would be putting up rain catchment, where residents would be using the rain water for most of their common household water use,” he said.

The initial design would have a 24-square-meter floor area for each unit, “but as to how many units per floor would really depend on the area, and we would try to persuade the landowner to donate at least 20 percent of this area to accommodate the squatters.”

“The landowner would have all the advantages in this arrangement. Imagine donating this portion to the city and putting the squatters in a more secured housing unit than continue holding on to the land without benefiting from it,” he said.

So far, the landowner was already informed of the tender, and “he was positive,” he said. “What we would discuss again with him is how much would he donate.”

In their talks with the city government, Vargas said the city wanted an affordable rate to ensure that squatter families and ordinary workers could afford a unit. “It wanted to offer the units for rent, at about P1,000 a month.”

“We suggested to sell it, at P250,000, or about P2,500 monthly amortization,” he added.
The project would solve at least the city’s two main problems: the housing backlog and putting the squatters and the workers in an affordable housing unit that is accessible to their work, schools and shopping places, he said.

Creba offered to build the mid-rise and low cost condominium unit for the poor a week before Mayor Sara Duterte had announced that she wanted the poor residents to acquire their own houses.

“It appeared that we were then on the same plane, and we started the talks immediately. The city government reacted positively, too,” he said.

The costing was not yet discussed nor was there any agreement. “We are currently designing the project, which we would present to the city government in two weeks.” He said the cost may only be about P12,000 per square meter.

The builders would be a consortium, composed of some members of Creba, “and ideally [it should] have one developer for each condominium building so that the units could almost simultaneously be made available.”