Gov’t housing grants offer fresh start to ex-rebels

he Comprehensive Local Integration Program (CLIP) for former CPP-NPA-NDF members was expanded by President Duterte and was renamed Enhanced CLIP or E-CLIP to provide more holistic, comprehensive and sustainable benefits to the beneficiaries, including housing grants.

E-CLIP is the flagship program of the Duterte administration that seeks to reintegrate former members of the CPP-NPA-NDF and the Militia ng Bayan into mainstream society. The program aims to effect social healing and national unity through a whole-of-nation approach towards a higher objective of achieving just and lasting peace. It provides social equity to former rebels (FRs) by devising sets of benefits and services for those who decide to lay down their arms and return to the folds of the law. These benefits do not serve as an end, but rather as a means to aid the FRs in securing a foothold in reforming their lives.

Previously, the CLIP only consisted of financial benefits like immediate assistance, reintegration assistance, firearm remuneration and livelihood assistance. E-CLIP paved the way for additional government programs such as education, livelihood and employment, medical, psychosocial and legal assistance and housing, seen as vital to successfully reintegrate the FRs and their families into the mainstream society. E-CLIP is practically a complete package.

As part of our housing guiding principle, we consider shelter as a right of every Filipino family. Hence, we fully support the President’s goal of granting housing units to rebel returnees, for them to start anew by ensuring that their basic needs are well met.

An integral part of rebuilding the lives of our returnees is by providing decent shelters that they can call their home. As the saying goes, one’s character is honed at home and that happy and peaceful homes—no matter how simple they are, in many cases—produce productive and law-abiding citizens.

So far, we have three major housing projects allotted for former rebels, namely, the Freedom Residences in Tagum City; Pineville in Bukidnon; and the Peace and Prosperity Village in Leyte—all developed into subdivision-like communities equipped with water and power supply lines and drainage systems, among other amenities that promote decent living conditions. The returnees and their families will also enjoy open spaces for community facilities, parking space, parks and playgrounds.

Spearheading these projects is the National Housing Authority (NHA), one of DHSUD’s key shelter agencies and our primary housing production arm.

The NHA has already constructed 119 housing units within the 5-ha Freedom Residences, while Pineville has 100 units. Some of the units are already occupied by E-CLIP beneficiaries. For the 5.47-ha Peace and Prosperity Village, which is divided in two phases, we are targeting to construct a total of 458 duplex housing units.

Each housing unit costs about P450,000 but the government is giving these to former rebels as grants to allow their smooth integration into the mainstream society, free from the burden of being an NPA.

Our public housing projects should encourage more of our brothers and sisters who have gone astray to reconsider life’s choices. This should help reassure them that our government is genuinely concerned for their well-being and welfare.

By offering decent shelters, the Duterte administration is not only embracing back the former communists to the folds of the law but allowing them to feel government’s presence.

As Jamaican poet Mutabaruka Allan Hope said, “food, clothes and shelter have no politics.” President Duterte has set aside politics in granting housing units to former enemies of the state—the first by an incumbent President, to allow them to become productive citizens, active participants in nation building and share our common goal of finally attaining just and lasting peace.