By Karl Garcia

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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