Housing Is Not the Problem. Scale Without Governance Is.
By Karl Garcia
As of January 2026, the Philippine government is building houses at an unprecedented pace—yet the housing crisis persists. This contradiction is not accidental. It is structural.
The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) is actively undertaking mass housing and resettlement projects across Metro Manila, CALABARZON, and Central Luzon, primarily to relocate families displaced by road widening, flood-control works, and waterway clearing. In January alone, DPWH oversaw ₱1.8 billion worth of resettlement housing for informal settler families (ISFs), including ₱700 million in projects in San Juan, Manila, and Navotas.
In Cavite, a 569-unit master-planned resettlement community is being developed on an eight-hectare site in Noveleta to relocate families affected by the JICA-funded Cavite Industrial Area Flood Risk Management Project. These efforts are supported by formal Resettlement Action Plans (RAPs) that include appraisal, compensation, and relocation assistance, often implemented in coordination with the National Housing Authority (NHA).
On paper, this looks like progress. In reality, it exposes a deeper failure: we only build housing after governance has already failed.
Resettlement Is a Symptom, Not a Solution
DPWH’s housing role exists because infrastructure projects arrive late to already crowded spaces. Roads and waterways are cleared not as part of an integrated urban strategy, but as emergency responses to congestion and flooding that should never have reached crisis levels.
This is not mass housing as development policy. It is mass housing as damage control.
Meanwhile, the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD) carries the burden of addressing a national housing backlog now estimated at over 8.25 million units. Its flagship program, Pambansang Pabahay Para sa Pilipino (4PH), originally promised one million units per year—a target so detached from fiscal and institutional reality that it was quietly scaled down.
The result is a fragmented system:
- DPWH builds resettlement housing to clear right-of-way problems,
- DHSUD pursues national housing targets,
- NHA struggles with credibility amid systemic inefficiency,
- Local governments absorb social and environmental consequences.
This is not a housing shortage problem. It is a scale-management failure.
Affordability and Investment vs. Accessibility
As veteran columnist Boo Chanco has pointed out, the housing market has decoupled entirely from Filipino incomes. Between 2015 and 2024, Metro Manila condominium prices rose by nearly 300 percent, while average family incomes grew by just 21 percent.
Government policy still clings to the fiction that homeownership is achievable for the urban poor. It is not. What low-income families need is secure, affordable rental housing near jobs—not distant ownership units that turn daily commuting into a poverty trap. Yet public rental housing remains politically unattractive—less photogenic than ribbon-cuttings, less profitable than preselling condos.
Private developers continue to prioritize luxury housing and cookie-cutter developments for the elite, treating socialized housing as a compliance checkbox rather than a civic obligation. The market builds where profit is easiest, not where society needs housing most.
Outside the public sector, investment opportunities highlight the misalignment. A January 2026 Gulf News guide notes that a modest ₱3 million (~$52,000) can secure a condo, house & lot, or agricultural land for rental income or long-term appreciation. Urban condos in cities like Cebu, Davao, Tagaytay, and Batangas generate monthly rents of ₱12,000–₱25,000, yielding 4–7 percent. Agricultural land near growth corridors can appreciate significantly over time, especially if tied to infrastructure improvements.
These opportunities are real for investors—but they underscore the gap between investment logic and everyday housing need. Even at ₱3 million, many Filipinos cannot afford a home near employment centers. Today’s property narrative focuses on where to invest, not where people can live affordably.
Learning Too Late—Again
This governance pattern is familiar. We saw it in Boracay, Puerto Galera, Panglao—places where growth arrived faster than regulation, environmental rules softened under pressure, and the state intervened only after damage became undeniable.
We are repeating the same mistake inland. Housing projects are approved without enforceable density limits, without job-housing alignment, and without infrastructure sequencing tied to carrying capacity. When flooding worsens, DPWH builds flood control. When communities sit on waterways, DPWH relocates them. When congestion becomes unbearable, roads are widened—displacing more people and triggering more resettlement. The cycle feeds itself.
Metro South: A Quiet Alternative
South of Metro Manila, a different pattern has emerged—not by grand design, but by incremental alignment.
Laguna’s Nuvali and the Calamba–Sta. Rosa corridor combined housing, employment, schools, and services within walkable cores. Alabang, once dismissed as overbuilt, proved resilient precisely because it built capacity ahead of demand. Batangas’ LIMA Estate paired industrial growth with housing and logistics, reducing commuter strain instead of exporting it.
These developments were not coordinated by a single authority. Yet together, they formed a polycentric region—multiple nodes of activity instead of one collapsing center. What protected Metro South was not better planning documents. It was time, spacing, and scale discipline.
Why Land Governance Matters More Than Housing Targets
This is where the long-delayed National Land Use Act becomes unavoidable. Not as a rigid master plan, but as a governance framework that:
- Sets enforceable urban growth boundaries,
- Ties density to infrastructure capacity,
- Prioritizes job-housing proximity,
- Sequences development before congestion forces relocation.
Without this, mass housing will remain reactive. Resettlement will remain permanent. DPWH will keep building houses—not because communities are planned—but because communities were allowed to fail.
The Choice Is Still Ours
The Philippines does not lack housing programs. It lacks the discipline to govern growth before it becomes unmanageable.
Metro South shows that early capacity, mixed use, and spatial restraint work—but only if aligned and protected. DPWH’s resettlement surge should not be celebrated as success. It should be read as a warning flare.
We can continue learning only after damage is done. Or we can finally govern early—while the outcome is still ours to shape.
Real housing affordability will not be achieved by pouring more concrete. It will be achieved when we stop confusing investment returns with human shelter, speed with direction, and resettlement with progress.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
May be of interest:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844021026165
Most of the relocation programs seem to favor building single-family homes. I think this is the wrong way to go about it, especially in a land-constrained country like the Philippines. Take a look at how Indonesia started solving their urban informal settler problem in the 2010s with medium-rise (Indonesians call them high-rises, but usually the buildings are around 10 stories) public apartment buildings that have income-based rental schemes. These Indonesian public apartments are called rumah susun or “rusun.”
Indonesia also connected rusuns to public transportation with terminals and sub-terminals within walking distance which requires less hailing of motor-taxis, pedicabs and tricycles. Areas for small businesses are also situated nearby to fulfill basic services like groceries, medical clinic, small gadgets, and so on. These are called bazaars. Access to the larger urban and exurban transport network is relatively easy to get to.
Rusuns started off as a way to relocate informal settlers without destroying the local economy (by taking out the workers), but have become a feature in Jakarta with higher-end rusuns for middle-income office workers to have a place close to their workplace. Rusuns have been so successful in Indonesia that there are now rusuns that are owned collectively by the unit-owners and high-end rusuns (what would be considered a luxury apartment).
There has been a lot of “condo” apartment high-rises going up in Cebu in the last 10 years, but nearly all target high-income individuals. I remember once renting a condo apartment near IT Park that cost me roughly 25K/month, and that was on a discount as I knew the landlady. The only people who seemed to rent these luxury apartments were girls set up by AFAMs, visiting businessmen, or wealthy students at nearby universities.
We had tenements and bliss during the Marcos Sr. Times as I wrote in the previoys relocation essay the jobs must also be nearby if not at least accessible through transport.
There is the Fort Bonifacio Tenement in Taguig built in 1963 (Macapagal times) to house informal settlers from “along da riles”. Also the four-storey Vitas Katuparan housing project in Tondo built in 1991 to relocate Smokey Mountain people not too far away. And the Bliss I am most aware of is UP BLISS at Philcoa bus station which are maybe 4-5 stories high.
I guess the Philippines is not as consistent as Indonesia is with its rusun, I do take Joey’s word on that, indeed there also were single-house BLISS places that I saw back in the days. BTW VP Leni also had multistory relocation, preferably within the city to not be too far from jobs, as part of her Presidential program. But everybody of course thought Isko Moreno knows better when it comes to the urban poor as he used to be one of them himself.
Thanks IBRS
Thanks Joey
OT – I asked ChatGPT to write a Tom Wolfe style satire of the geng geng stuff going on now in PH socmed and got this:
We had Jeprocks Jologs punk hardcore .
Once in SG i was made to wear a coat even in shorts just to dine in.
@IBRS
Are there still neo nazis and skinheads around?
haven’t seen skinheads in ages but neonazis of course continue to exist – but also Arab clans and Turkish gangs in parts of Berlin.
Joey has been in France recently so for sure he can confirm that North African gangs in French suburbs or banlieue still exist. Needless to say, anyone who has seen how violent certain groupings in Europe can be will see that geng-geng are noisy but essentially harmless.
Thanks Irineo, correct I dusagree with safety concerns and issues
It seems to me the tensions around French Muslims has to do more with a failure of assimilation into French society. I mean, the French Roma have been around since the 15th century yet are still not fully integrated. So the North African problem in France is more similar to the influx of Syrian refugees into Germany, but probably worse as the because of the less flexible nature of “French-ness.” There is also a problem with Russian and Balkan Slavic gangs in France.
But yeah, geng-gengs are mostly harmless and are just expressing themselves by imitating what they perceive to be great, just like the conyos they offend are ironically doing the same by imitating Western/South Korean trends. Both are delulu tbh but an observation is that the geng-gengs don’t have a problem with co-existing with conyos, but the conyos do have a problem with those who would break their illusory state.
this reminds me of how MLQ3 postulated that English might be on the decline in the Philippines because ever since call centers, it no longer is a status marker like it used to be. I personally remember how much of a status marker it was in the 1970s/1980s.
MLQ3 also mentioned that Spanish peaked in the 1930s Philippines and also lost its popularity as it no longer was a status marker. It is a bit like in fashion, trickle-down of fashions that used to be the preserve of the rich and powerful means they lose their “coolness”. What seems silly to me is how nearly everything in the Philippines is a status marker, though it seems to me France is also highly stratified as a society.
I suspect that grasp of English was never as strong in the Philippines as some would like to believe. Better in more educated society, but not always. Most conyos don’t strike me as being highly educated, though some might be. A lot of numbers in the Philippines seem to be inflated or massaged to make things seem better than it really is.
2024 FLEMMS:
Click to access FF2025-69-PH-STATE-OF-LITERACY-2024.pdf
DepEd 2024 FLEMMS policy brief:
https://www.deped.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/PB25-002_-Functional-Literacy_September2025.pd
From the policy brief as the PSA Resolution 13 (2024) is not available online the criteria for basic literacy are, in ANY recognized language:
1.) Ability to write full name
2.) Ability to write home address
3.) Ability to write date of birth
4.) Ability to write highest educational attainment
5.) Ability to answer the numerical compute value based on one sentence description
As we can see here, literally any Filipino can surpass the above criteria in Tagalog, mother tongue, or English. Btw, the respondent can even answer in Spanish if they were so inclined. The two hard questions are the educational attainment question and the numerical compute one, but for the former something like “G10” or “SHS” would suffice, and for the latter anyone who has taught small children could relate that even pre-K kids can identify patterns and map that to the answer when it is posed like “if there are 5 eggs and you eat 2 eggs, how many eggs are left?” For the functional literacy rate, this is self-reported and is subjective, so it’s not a very useful reporting value.
I’ve always found rapid-fire Taglish to be very hard to deal with. While loan words for something that does not have a Philippine equivalent is practiced in any language, it seems silly to me to interject random English words just to make what is conveyed sound more important. When there is a disconnect of understanding between two languages being smushed together in a sentence, I guess the reader or listener just tries to interpret what they may from what is written or said. Bislish is easier for me to understand and more care seems to be taken to construct Bislish sentences that actually make sense, at least in Cebu where many people speak English; the same cannot be said in most other Cebuano-speaking places.
The adoption of bits and pieces of a perceivably more prestigious language in interjected words might just another form of exterior accouterment collection that is probably more obvious to an outsider but not so obvious internally. That is a feature of Austronesian society and can be seen across the greater Austronesian sphere and into the Oceania and Polynesian sphere. It’s not purely negative, as the Indonesians and Malaysians have figured out how to positively leverage the need to associate in proximity to prestige to move forward into the modern world.
🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🍻🍻🍻 That had me laughing into my coffee. Tremendous LITERATURE from the bowls and brains of ChatGPT!
on topic: https://www.facebook.com/sircamp/posts/pfbid02k8x1vB157WQhe2Yyi1cjcaywTqFGehtbxQGNxM2pCbVnngm8QQ3Cz63agLUCUH8yl
I’m a big fan of film noir, neo noir, and techno/neon noir. The descendent cyberpunk genre was rooted in the Techno-Orientalism from the 1980s fears of Japanese economic ascendency. It’s very clear that Techno-Orientalists drew inspiration from the dual-worlds nature of 1980s Tokyo of a gritty underworld inhabited by a faceless underclass engaged in toil hidden in plain view from futuristic (for the time) bright neon signs washing the wards of Tokyo in an unnatural harsh glow. I have read some observations starting in the 2000s that Manila probably is a far more representative model for the genre than 1980s Tokyo ever was.
Of course Techno-Orientalism for those who have read genre works depicts an Asian landscape that is at once futuristic and gleaming while at the same time dystopian, aseptically cold, dehumanizing. Mega-conglomerates have undue influence on a lethargic (and lazy) government. In a country where I had heard “why should I invest in x when it’s cheaper to hire” more than once, human dignity is subordinate to profits and advancement. Whereas Techno-Orientalism often showed body modification as class signifiers with the elites having high-technology while the underclass made due with clunky DIY, affluent conyos flaunt brand names most Filipinos could never hope to buy while the youth of the poor like the geng-geng subculture cobble together DIY outfits that approximate their idols out of ukay-ukay jackpot hauls.
Techno-Orientalism also makes liberal use of metaphor and allegory, a central one which is the notion of a “virtual frontier” of fantastic thought that exists alongside reality. The segregated segments of society engage in a consensual hallucination where something can be detected with the five senses but is willfully truncated mentally as reality is too hard to accept, and fantasy is the easier choice. On pinoy socmed photos and videos of murder or traffic accident victims are posted casually to be commented on, with no connection to the depicted person’s humanity, or rather there is a disconnected and dissociative feeling. The waking world and the dream world seem to be blurred, with an increasing number of people being unable to differentiate between the two. There is a constant battle between existentialism (survival) and nihilism (meaninglessness). Nothing is what it seems. Even at-face interaction is “plastic.” The only circle of trust is between close family and friends.
I learn a lot from you and the rest of the gang.
I do have a scary vision of Mega Manila around 2100 with supertall buildings and flying cars like in the 5th Element sci-fi film..
..but underneath Skyway Levels 3-5 (and the already rotten Levels 1-2 which are populated by urban poor) everything is progressively more flooded and filthy.
Life in the upper reaches is like in Zalem from Alita Battle Angel or the orbital paradise from Matt Damon’s Elysium movie.
Life in the lowest reaches is a mix of Iron City from Alita Battle Angel plus trash-filled Earth in Matt Damon’s Elysium – and Tondo Happyland.
PPop 20th Gen casting Shows in that year will give a chosen few from BCD classes a shot at fame and the rest a sliver of false hope.
This vision is terrifying. I will propose something even more terrifying: The Philippines is one of the templates that techno-fascism has used for their vision of “praxis cities” — independent “city-states” lead by a CEO-class that has dictatorial powers while drawing labor from a dehumanized underclass of mindless consumer-slaves inhabiting the hinterland beyond the praxis city walls.
A lot of this techbro belief is rooted in the Technocracy Movement of 1930s North America. The Technocracy Movement criticized both capitalism and communism on the basis that both require a price system that is incapable of effective action; the former through a regulated market and the latter through a state-controlled market. They argued that a society dictated by technocratic experts would be more productive and rational, but of course appointed themselves as the “experts.”
The Technocracy Movement pushed for creating a “Technate of America” wherein the territory of North America to Northern South America would be under the control of praxis cities dotting central nodes, extracting resources and labor from everywhere else and the people that inhabited those places. The “technocrats” were also connected to the 1933 Business Plot that sought to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt as a lot of tycoons of industry at the time were supporters. Being that the Canadians are far more reasonable people, the Technocracy Movement was banned by Canada in 1940 while in the US it faded into relative obscurity.
Here’s an interesting connection: Joshua Norman Haldeman, a Canadian fascist who was arrested and expelled from Canada was one of the prominent leaders of the Technocracy Movement in Canada who later spread his beliefs in South Africa — and the maternal grandfather of Elon Musk. We of course know the so-called “PayPal Mafia” are all of South African Apartheid origin who immigrated to Canada and the US to “escape” the return of majority rule in South Africa with the end of Apartheid.
Here’s another interesting connection: The nexus of the American Technocracy Movement was located in my suburban Los Angeles city. That city is now the bulwark of MAGA in California. Adjacent Irvine is sometimes referred to the Silicon Valley of Southern California and hosts companies such as Anduril, also founded by PayPal Mafia seed money.
Fast forward to the 1990s, the PayPal Mafia who came to Canada and the US with Apartheid money became early drivers of Web 2.0 in Silicon Valley. They also have a weird obsession for Tolkien and dystopian science fiction, fundamentally misunderstanding both or willfully choosing to identify with the villains. The Epstein Files suggest that Russian oligarch money may have a connection also. Those who can remember long enough can recall PayPal was mostly used for money laundering in its early days before being legitimized by mainstream bank support.
These techno-fascists wrapped themselves in the cloak of “libertarianism” and have attempted to build praxis cities (sometimes known as “Freedom cities” in the US) in Honduras (Próspera), California (Atlas). Further designs are in California (“California Forever”), Nevada (Telosa), the Mediterranean (Praxis), Greenland and Venezuela. The defining feature of these praxis cities the government is run by a Board dominated by a CEO and a Chairman. All public land and resources are privatized. As much AI would be used as possible as a labor replacement, while any necessary human labor would be minimized. People would be controlled through hyper-consumerism and “universal basic income.”
One can only take a step back and look at BGC and see how many similarities there are with the goals of business interests that are emphasized over the needs of people. The saving grace in the US is that Americans are starting to wise up to all this as the current so-called “titans of industry” who leech off of public resources are not as smart as the titans of industry from the 1930s who actually built stuff with private capital. I wonder if Filipinos will wise up as well.
“The Philippines does not lack housing programs. It lacks the discipline to govern growth before it becomes unmanageable.” – Karl G.
Thanks, Karl. I’ve read your essay AND the comments so far. I think Philippines is stuck with that housing situation. We’re not good at maintenance, including maintenance of real estate.
There were areas of Manila that were nice like Malate and Ermita….then population took over, so it was Makati next. I’m old enough to remember driving by Bel-Air village in Makati when it was all vacant lots, only the streets were there. We visited residents of San Lorenzo Village when it was “parang States.”
I remember when the Ugarte Field was still a patch of green. Now it’s Metro South, a quiet alternative? Give it time…..sad to say.
many remnants of the ilustrado class, the old wealth, held out in their Malate and Ermita apartments for quite a while but are more on the outskirts nowadays.
letting stuff rot that would not even be considered old in the USA (and much less in Europe) is typical senyorito mentality, like having money to waste.
https://www.kapitbisig.com/philippines/noli-me-tangere-the-social-cancer-by-dr-jose-rizal-a-complete-english-version-chapter-4-heretic-and-filibuster-english-version-of-noli-me-tangere_725.html this is from the start of Noli Chapter 4 (the one where Ibarra talks to the old Spanish officer)
(Ibarra as a conyo imitating a geng geng or jologs in younger years, therefore being a bit jeprox, is also amusing)
My main residence is 50 years old. My first ever property (which I still own) is nearly 70 years old. Both are in good condition with maintenance. I shudder to think “what if” how much the labor cost along would be to do a deep repair if I let the properties fall into disrepair, considering the original appraised values in the mid 1970s and late 1950s and the much cheaper labor at the time.
I do have sympathy to ordinary personal residences in the Philippines though. Many Filipinos were barely able to scrape together the wood and corrugated roofing to build a house to begin with, much less keep up with repairs. The humid climate of the Philippines means termites quickly attack any deadwood within a few years.
Assuming good materials and construction technique even structures built with hollow block or concrete and rebar require maintenance. Mortar degrades in humidity and must be patched up. Protective plaster cladding or stucco must be re-applied when it starts to flake and chip off.
Perhaps for the more affluent who can afford to either maintain or replace, preserving what *they own* is fine. There seems to be less emphasis among the classes with more agency to preserve what is *publicly owned,* however, including the institutions of the state.