Creba wants socialized housing quota eased

The Chamber of Real Estate and Builders’ Associations Inc. (Creba) wants to lower the requirement for socialized housing to a more “realistic and feasible” quota, as part of the amendments being made on the Urban Development and Housing Act (UDHA).

In a statement, Creba national president Noel M. Cariño explained that the current law (Republic Act 7279) requires all subdivision developers to build socialized housing equivalent to either 20 percent of the total project area or cost of their main developments.

There are now several pending bills in Congress aiming to extend the requirement to developers of condominiums but with more compliance options, Cariño noted.

“But this amendment will be workable if compliance projects for condominiums will be pegged to a more reasonable quota of 5 percent, while for subdivisions, it is time to consider a quota of only 15 percent to make it more realistic and feasible for developers to comply with,” added Creba national chair Charlie A. V. Gorayeb.

“We would like however, that all modes of compliance redound to production of more housing units instead of its former cash and other equivalents,” Gorayeb further said.

Another group, the Subdivision and Housing Developers Association Inc. (SHDA), had also earlier sought for a revision on one of the requirements under the law, which provides that for every project, a developer has to allocate 20 percent of land area or project cost for socialized housing.

“So if your project is worth P100 million, you have to build something worth P20 million that would benefit a socialized housing community. To ask for 20 percent from a developer, that’s a huge amount of money. For example, the project is P1 billion, that’s P200 million. That kind of taxation is really unheard of,” SHDA president Paul Tanchi earlier said.

Their proposal, Tanchi had said, is to also lower the percentage to 10 percent of the 20 percent of the project cost, especially if the amount will be given as an outright donation, since a developer can no longer recover that.

The demand for socialized housing units is expected to reach 1.58 million units between 2012 and 2030, SHDA had said.