Rebuilding framework for calamity-hit homes set

The Philippines’ housing authority and the World Bank have come out with a framework to rebuild shelters damaged or destroyed by calamities, estimated to reach 300,000 units per year.

The postdisaster shelter recovery policy framework was jointly crafted by the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD) and the Washington-based multilateral lender “to ensure full recovery of households affected by natural disasters,” DHSUD Secretary Eduardo del Rosario said in the document published on Jan. 20.

“Having an average of 20 tropical cyclones hitting the country annually because of its geographical location, in addition to its inclusion in the ring of fire where many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur, shelter resilience will continuously be a challenge” in the Philippines, Del Rosario said.

Recurring challenge

The World Bank noted that in 2013, one million houses were flattened during the onslaught of super typhoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan).

World Bank estimates in 2016 showed that the Philippines had a housing deficit of 1.2 million, half of which were among informally settled households.

It did not help that the recovery of affected poor families were usually hampered by the low quality of shelters being built in the aftermath of natural calamities, the World Bank said.

The World Bank said there had been “difficulty in identifying and accessing land for shelter, lack of a sustainable and affordable shelter finance system, and inadequate or inappropriate governance of the shelter sector, including the concentration of subsidies in a limited number of government-built shelter units.”

Inadequate policies

Prior to the framework, both the national and local governments had inadequate shelter recovery policies and programs. “The country also lacks effective pre-disaster strategies such as home insurance, structure retrofitting and pre-emptive resettlement programs to reduce the vulnerability of people during disasters,” the World Bank said.

“Once people are displaced from their shelters, it takes years before they are adequately rehoused. Most often, the hardest hit are poor and informally settled families whose shelters are particularly vulnerable,” it added.

With the postdisaster shelter recovery policy framework now in place, the government was expected to improve its capability to make sure that calamity-hit households will fully recover while developing disaster-resilient and sustainable communities.