Residents of the City of Manila who are under the middle class, including workers from the city government, will now also be accommodated in the city's public housing projects.
Manila Mayor Francisco "Isko Moreno" Domagoso said around 35 percent of the capacity of the public housing structures that they are building will be allocated for those in the working class.
Each room will have an area of 40 square meters and will have two bedrooms.
Domagoso said they revised their public housing plans to accommodate those from the middle class to give everyone "an opportunity to own a condominium in the city."
Originally, informal settler families and those living in critical areas were the only ones to be relocated in the housing structures.
"This is a massive approach. Long-term, continuous, massive approach of, once and for all, that the government will literally address (lack of) housing. And you know for a fact... na 'yung unit natin, hindi bahay kalapati (that our units are not small)," he said in a directional meeting with city government officials on Monday.
"(This is a) decent, honest-to-goodness, long-term approach of the city with regard to housing," he added.
So far, the city government has started building three structures, namely, Tondominium 1, Tondominium 2, and Binondominium. They are also planning to build the Basecommunity.
The local chief executive said they have already drafted an ordinance that will serve as a "bible" for the city government's in-city housing projects.
"We put some measures on it so other administrations will have a hard time amending it," he said.
"This is a painstaking, long process. But one thing is for sure, we have already paved the way. And we did not stop there just by paving the way, we are building already, it's there, it's being built," he added.
The public housing projects are part of Domagoso's "Build Build Manila" program "Land for the Landless" project.
The city government will also acquire 191.05 hectares of land for development into “socialized housing projects” for 14,785 households living at "critical zones" from 2020 to 2025.