Page 324 - 2019 6th AFIS & ASMMA

Let me just give you some examples of housing policies of the » Moderator | Henny Sender
Philippines. We have colleagues from the Philippines here; I'm sure they
know much more about these policies than I do. But one important
policy in Manila was to resettle the informal settlers that live downtown
Manila to new areas outside of Manila. It sounds like a very good
initiative, but did not turn out to be very successful. Just to give you a
little bit of an overview of Manila; the center is here right at the bay, and
here, there is a huge lake bordering Manila. So, most of the informal
settlements are actually very much downtown, close to the port. Now
they decide to resettle people here towards the South. It takes by car
about three hours to reach Calauan, so you can imagine that this poses a
huge issue in terms of livelihood. Where can these people work? You give
them nice houses and so the consequence was that some people move
there, sold the house or rented the house, then moved back to the slums
of Manila.
Another initiative was to promote low cost housing. Again the main
issue was that the location is even farther than this resettlement of
informal dwellers; it's about a four-hour drive for Manila. So, you really
cut off a lot of people that could be interested in buying these houses, if
they were closer to the city center.
What has worked better is a so-called community mortgage program,
where basically these informal settlers, they together form a so-called
community association. This community association borrow a kind of a
small amount; it's only a hundred thousand pesos, which translates into
twenty thousand dollars. And they use this money to upgrade houses,
they also combine it with savings and build houses as well. So, we have
seen a couple of places within Manila, where they were able to basically
really improve their situation. I'm running out of time, have only five
seconds left, so thank you very much for your attention and please check
this report, which will come out at the end of September. Thank you
very much.
326
Thank you. Simon, before I go to you, I'm just going to ask you one or
two follow-up questions, because I thought your presentation was very
interesting. I see your slides are very stark in the massive increase in lack
of affordability. Why is that? How do you explain that striking increase in
housing prices, which has made affordability such an issue?
» Panelist | Matthias C. Helble
One good thing about Asia is massive economic growth. This led to
increase for the demand for housing. Owning a house is still seen as a Session II
very important investment in Asia. So, all of you want to be homeowners,
which results in a huge increase in demand, while the supply response
was actually very slow. So this led to a high increase in housing prices. I
think that is the main reason.
» Moderator | Henny Sender
So, it's not a question of income not growing adequately so much as a
supply-side constraint.
» Panelist | Matthias C. Helble
I would say it's more a supply-side constraint. Because people are able
to afford more clothing, food, travel, etc., but the housing didn't respond
in terms of supply side.
» Moderator | Henny Sender
Are those constraints and supply artificial? How do you explain the
lack of adequate increase in supply?
» Panelist | Matthias C. Helble
There are several factors. What we have often found is that the cities
have grown out of their administrative boundaries. So, sometimes
2019 6th AFIS & ASMMA Annual Meeting 327