SOCIAL JUSTICE IN HOUSING

AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT:

Challenges for Public Policy
Makers
A UP Academic Congress
To Challenge Our Next Leaders
Malcolm Hall, College of Law
University of the Philippines
February 1-5, 2010
By
ERNESTO M. SEROTE
Professor and Director of Training (Ret.)
School of Urban and Regional Planning
University of the Philippines
 Thesis of Paper
• In the urban development process the
poor are always marginalized.
• Government policy makers have been
faulted as abetting inequality and
exploitation of the poor.
• Cities can still be made inclusive and less
discriminatory if policy makers adhere to
principles of social justice.
 Socio-Spatial Structure
Period of Antiquity
Elite < Priests, administrators

<Urban commoners:
Lower Classes craftsmen, bureaucratic personnel

<Lower than lower classes : perform tasks

Outcastes essential to the system but
outside the pale of respectability, lived
outside the city
 Socio-Spatial Structure
Mercantilist City

Merchants < Shipping merchants; Importers

<Brokers; Auctioneers;
Middlemen Commissioning merchants

Laboring <Artisans; Journeymen; Apprentices

Classes Casual day laborers, lived outside the
city center but within walking distance
 Social Class Structure
Industrial Revolution Period
 Industrialists/ Ship owners
 Professionals
Capitalist  Administrators
 Landlords

 Skilled tradesmen
Labor aristocrats  Task masters
 Pacemakers
(Mildling Class)  Shopkeepers
 Lower professionals and administrators

 Semi-skilled, unskilled workers

 Coal heavers
 Ballast men
Residuum  Stevedores
(Underclass)  Riggers
 Construction helpers
 Porters
 Sweepers
 Domestic helpers
 Lived in appalling housing conditions
 Socio-Spatial Structure
Late Industrial Age
• Over-crowded working class accommodations
demolished to make room for commercial
development.
• Displaced working class re-housed in high-rise
tenement at the outskirts of the city
• Economic base later shifts from manufacturing
to services leaving industrial workers unable to
compete for new jobs
• Inner cities revitalized and new high-rent
housing beyond the reach of the poor.
 Structure of Philippine Society
Early Spanish Regime
< Accumulated lands by
Spaniards
purchase, donations,
trickery

Native Principalia
<Appropriated common lands for their private
property

Chinese
<Also consolidated lands from the masses

Landless
Masses <Poor majority, dispossessed
 Social Structure During Late
Spanish Regime
Absentee
< Spaniards including friar orders
Landlords

Salaried
<Spanish nationals
Administrators

Big Inquilino (Non- <Most privileged; former principalia

cultivating renter) Chinese mestizos

Small Inquilino <Native

(Cultivating renter)

Aparceros <Poor majority, native, lived in rural

(Sharecroppers or hinterlands
salaried workers)
 Socio- spatial Structure
American Period to the Present

• Americans introduce real estate business

• Urban development mainly due to
speculative subdivision developers and
individual builders.
• Resulting spatial pattern is a dual city;
formal and informal.
• The poor are usually relocated to far away
resettlement sites.
Urban Critics on Urban Planning
• Political economists (M. Castells, D. Harvey):
Social inequality is the result of exploitation by the
property market and planners are collaborators
with property developers in the latter's
accumulation process.
• Post modern (J. Jacobs, R. Sennett): The city is
the product of the elite and powerful imposing their
values on other groups, through mechanisms of
planning like exclusionary zoning.
• Urban populists (H. Gans, P. Saunders): Planners
themselves are elitist who disregard the desires of
ordinary people.
 Social Justice: 3 Perspectives
• Redistributive Justice
– John Rawls, David Harvey
• People Empowerment
– Iris Marion Young, Jane Jacobs
• Environmental Justice
– Andy Merrifield, Raymond Bryant
 Social Justice Defined
• Equality in enjoyment of basic rights and
assignment of basic duties.
• Inequality is justified if it results in
compensating benefits for
everyone, especially for the least
advantaged members of society

- John Rawls
 Social Justice Defined
• Equal allocation of basic needs.
• Preferential treatment for the poor and
under-privileged
• Extra reward for the meritorious

- David Harvey
 Social Justice as Anti- Oppression
• Exploitation of labor
• Marginalization
• Powerlessness
• Cultural imperialism
• Violence
– against persons and property
– organized crime
 Environmental Social Justice
• Maldistribution of environmental benefits
• Inequality in exposure to environmental
hazards and risks
• Spatial and social impact of natural
resource exploitation, e.g. logging, mining,
fishing, plantation crops, industrial
pollution
1st Principle of Social Justice: Equal
Allocation of Basic Needs

What do we consider our basic

needs in the Philippines?
Social Justice as Meeting Basic
Needs
• 11 Basic needs of Mrs. Marcos?
• Minimum basic needs of FVR?
• 13+1 indicators of NAPC?
• What one cannot do without on a daily
basis; adequate food and safe drinking
water
 Hungry Filipinos based on SWS
June 2008 Survey
% of Families Persons
respondents affected
Philippines 16.3 2.9 M 14.5 M

Metro Manila 22 530,000 2.65 M

Rest of Luzon 12.3 970,000 4.85 M

Visayas 19.7 710,000 3.55 M

Mindanao 17.7 720,000 3.6 M

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer

July 22, 2008 Issue
• Coverage on Safe Water
80% of population (2002)
MDG Target (2015) – 87%
MTPDP Target (2010) – 92%

• Coverage on Sanitation
86.1% of population (2002)
MDG Target (2015) – 84%
MTPDP Target (2010) – 86%

Source: National Water Resources Board (NWRB)

2nd Principle of Social Justice:
Preferential Treatment for the
Under-Privileged

Who are considered Under-

Privileged?
• From 1990 to 2005, the government has successfully
provided water for an additional 23.04 Million Filipinos;
however…
• The population increased by 24.5 Million over the
same period

Meeting the MDG Water & Sanitation targets is a

precondition to addressing all the other Goals.
Social Justice in the Constitution
(Article XIII)
• Full protection to labor, organized and
unorganized, local and overseas, full
employment and equal employment
opportunities for all.
• Agrarian reform to promote the rights of
landless persons to own the land they till and
to provide support to agriculture.
• Protect the rights of subsistence fisherfolk to
the preferential use of communal marine and
fishery resources.
Social Justice in the Constitution
(Article XIII)
• Provide affordable and decent housing and
basic services to homeless citizens in urban
centers and resettlement areas.
• Give priority to the health needs of the
underprivileged
sick, elderly, disabled, women and children
and endeavor to provide free medical care to
paupers.
• Protect working women by providing safe and
healthful working environment, taking into
consideration their maternal functions.
Our Record of Compliance as per
Philippine Asset Reform Report
Card
• RA 8371 - Indigenous People’s Rights
Acts
• RA 8550 - Philippine fisheries code
• RA 6657 - Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Law
• RA 7279 – Urban Development and
Housing Act
 Ancestral domain

• 39.8% - Percentage of ancestral domains

where extractive activities like logging
and mining are present

• 72.1% of total number of extractive

activities are in operation without the
consent of tribes

• 74.1% of respondents have access to

infrastructure and extension services
Source: Philippine Asset Reform
Report Card and PhilDHRRA
 Small-scale Fisheries

• 56.8% of respondents said commercial

fishing vessels encroached on fisherfolk-
reserved waters

• 32.6% of respondents have access to

fish ports, ice plants and other post-
harvest facilities

• 78.3% of respondents have inadequate

housing
Source: Philippine Asset Reform
Report Card and PhilDHRRA
 Agrarian reform

• 13.7% of respondents said they

experienced legal or physical harassment
from landowners and other groups

• 52.3% of respondents do not have

access to haulers, warehouses and other
post-harvest facilities

• 44% of beneficiary-respondents were

able to access credit
Source: Philippine Asset Reform
Report Card and PhilDHRRA
 Socialized housing

• 32% of respondents have working

drainage systems

• 56% of respondents have not yet

received any lot entitlement certificate

• 49.4% of respondents reported that their

communities have no community
development plan
Source: Philippine Asset Reform
Report Card and PhilDHRRA
 3rd Principle of Social Justice:
Reward for the Meritorious

• Practically unknown in the government

• Mainly voluntary initiatives by the private
sector and civil society organizations,
e.g. Galing Pook Awards
 Social Justice in Housing and
Urban Development
• The city is for everyone who wants to live
there.
– Ensure there is enough space- not
necessarily land- for the housing needs of
every household
– There should be genuine urban land
reform, i.e., greater consolidation rather than
distribution of urban land.
– Give preference for compact urban forms to
preserve agricultural lands for food security
 Social Justice in Housing and
Urban Development
• All residential communities, regardless of
income levels, should be located in safe,
hazard free areas.
• Promote social mix and prevent the
formation of residential enclaves.
• Undertake honest -to- goodness socialized
housing schemes for those who cannot
afford to avail of housing in the market.
 Social Justice in Housing and
Urban Development
• The 70% unreached by safe water are
mostly the poor in scattered communities.
Make level II the minimum delivery system
in all areas.
• Protect watersheds of sources of drinking
water
• Adopt water-sensitive urban designs
• Maintain vegetative cover in upper
catchments of watersheds
UDHA Policies on Housing and
Urban Development
• Decent and affordable housing with basic
services and employment opportunities
available to underprivileged and homeless
citizens
• Rational use and development of urban
land
• Workable policies to regulate and direct
urban growth and expansion towards a
dispersed urban net and more urban-rural
balance
UDHA Policies on Housing and
Urban Development
• Equitable land tenure system
• More effective people’s participation
in the urban development process
• Improved capability of LGUs in
undertaking urban development and
housing
 Social Justice in Sharing of
National Wealth
• Increase LGU share in the IRA to 60%.
• Revise sharing scheme as follows
– Allocate the 40% following the currently used
formula, based on population and land area.
– Allocate the 20% selectively to assist LGUs
overcome special difficulties.
– Part of the 20% to reward outstanding
performance of individual LGUs
Thank You!