The Present State of our Housing Struggle (July 18)

The inter-agency housing committee meeting that was supposed to be scheduled last June 30 did not pushed through. Maybe because the different agencies did not agree on the concept of conducting a meeting. Or maybe because they know in the first place that it will never push through, HUDCC only appproved of the idea just to cool us down and get the meeting over with. We already won something with this struggle. We made the developer rethink their position on the price of the housing units they're selling. Their original price of PhP 330,000 for a lot area of 35 sq. m. was decreased to PhP 240,000. They changed their formula to: 180,000 for the original house and lot price (based on the signed contract to sell), plus a PhP 1,000 every month for the rent since the unit was occupied, amounting to a total of PhP 60,000 (based on a document received from the developer). From their original stance of "take it or leave it," they re-computed the price to include what the original contract to sell shows (180,000). This offer is still not acceptable. We will continue until we received a just result. But if one will look at the whole struggle scenario, we can say that we had won initial phase.