KMU to Gloria: build new houses for poor now

We are extremely bothered by reports that government agencies are preventing residents of urban poor communities, who were displaced by tropical storm “Ondoy,” from returning to their spaces of residence.

With the absence of government action of building decent housing for our urban poor kababayans, we have full sympathy for those residents who want to return to their homes now. We appeal to our kababayans to understand them.

The Arroyo regime should understand that displaced families cannot stay long in evacuation centers. Temporary and limited donations, cramped spaces, unsanitary conditions, and lack of jobs force our poor kababayans to leave these centers and return to their homes, no matter how precarious it is to live in there.

Instead of preventing residents of flood-prone urban poor communities from returning to their homes, the Arroyo regime should focus its efforts on creating new homes for them.

The fact that they are now returning to their homes, or to spaces where their homes previously stood, should serve as a signal to the government that it should build new homes for them now – and fast. The Arroyo regime should help our kababayans move on with their lives.

We agree that flood-prone areas should be vacated and that these are not fit for human residence in the first place. Even poor people say so. We believe, however, that the best way to leave these spaces vacant is to create new homes for our urban poor kababayans.

The people’s desire that residents of these communities be kept out of harm should not be used by the Arroyo regime to attack the urban poor’s right to decent housing, leave them stranded in evacuation centers, homeless and jobless, and ignore them completely after the media attention on the survivors of “Ondoy” has died down.

We demand that the new housing for our urban poor kababayans be decent – with water and electricity supply, safe from man-made and natural disasters, near areas where they can work and send their children to school, and are fit for humans to live in.

We likewise condemn statements by some media personalities that the phenomenon of residents returning to their homes can be attributed to the work of “professional squatters.”

The bottom line is that widespread landlessness and joblessness in the countryside force families to move to hazard-prone parts of cities – under bridges, near rivers and along railway stations. If there is sufficient decent housing for them, they won’t be living in areas that they know will put their lives in danger. They deserve a decent place to live in, not irresponsible remarks that gloss over their real plight. ###