Who grabbed vast portions of the PHHC, NGC lands?
Credit to Author: Marlen V. Ronquillo| Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2020 17:02:14 +0000
The old People’s Homesite and Housing Corp. (PHHC), the National Government Center (NGC) and the University of the Philippines (UP) owned at least 2,000 hectares of prime land until the 1960s in what is now the heart of Quezon City. Of that grand total, the old PHHC developed eight housing projects, from Project One to Project Eight, in the 1950s and the 1960s. I was born in the early ‘50s, but I knew the PHHC by heart. The late Angel “Star” Macapagal, the brother of the late former president Diosdado Macapagal, ran the PHHC. And his executive assistants at the PHHC were mostly from my town of Lubao.
The nickname “Star” was not at all related to academic excellence. Angel Macapagal cleaned the best of his generation’s players in the game of poker. He was a star poker player.
He also ran the PHHC with integrity. The late Bets Layug, his executive assistant at the PHHC and the one running the daily affairs of the office, had to commute to Lubao on weekends. He was forbidden by Angel Macapagal to get a housing slot at one of the eight housing sites of the PHHC. The guy running the distribution of housing sites at eight big housing projects could not even get a small lot of 400 square meters for his family. Today, that kind of delicadeza has vanished from the polity.
The Macapagal government came to an end. The PHHC was replaced by what is now the National Housing Authority (NHA). The PHHC-administered public lands in Quezon City that were outside of the eight “projects” — and in theory turned over to the NHA — remained substantial.
Ok, this is the question now. Whatever happened to that substantial pool of land? How much of that remaining land is now occupied by giant, boxy malls and became part of the foundational wealth of some of the richest families in the country. And acquired by the nabobs of real estate and mall operations for a song?
We do not know — there is no accurate and updated accounting on whatever happened to the lands under the administration of the old PHHC.
If Mr. Salvador Panelo is really sincere in looking deeply into onerous land deals in Quezon City, this is the stating point. Take an inventory of the giant malls owned by the country’s dollar billionaires. Find out if the PHHC lands were sold for a song to the mall owners and operators. Get a copy of the deeds of sale.
Then make a full public disclosure of the land deals. Did the acquisition prices go beyond a few pesos per square meter? Or, worse than that, who green lighted the sale? If the terms were onerous, which I am 100 percent sure they were, the owners can be persuaded to contribute to the mass housing project of government. Because these lands were originally for mass housing.
Mr. Panelo is a lawyer. He is very powerful. He has access to land deals dating back from time immemorial. That these were former public lands disposed off under very unsettling and low-key circumstances gives him the moral authority to start a deep probe.
It is his even his civic duty to do so. Should he shirk away from that deeper probe, we would assume that his supposed exposé on the “onerous” UP Town Center deal was pure and unalloyed gimmickry. On a personal level, I do not believe in 99 percent of what Mr. Panelo says. But on the UP Town Center deal, he was right on the substance — there are land deals in the country’s capital that are onerous and one-sided (in favor of the real estate nabobs) and these deals have to be revisited and reviewed.
After the accounting of the PHHC lands, the next target should be the accounting of NGC the lands.
A 100-hectare land east of EDSA up to UP was supposed to be a contiguous site for the frontline government departments and many of their sub-agencies. That was the plan.
The lofty driving force was to decongest the City of Manila by relocating the frontline government departments into that vast, strategically located land in Quezon City to be called “National Government Center.” Even then, the concept of a one-stop shop for the transacting public was already a fully developed concept.
Today, in what was supposed to be the NGC, we have more boxy malls than government department buildings. The malls, hotels, and leisure and entertainment centers, and even a university, are owned by the usual suspects — the billionaire real estate developers.
The repurposing of the NGC lands is a mystery, wrapped in shrouded deals and, for all intents and purposes, illegal. Was it outright sale or lease?
The low-income urban dwellers in Quezon City and its teeming squatter population have been wondering about these virtual land grabs. So much public lands for the real estate nabobs and so very little housing areas for the poor.
And Congress, so giddy about conducting probes and investigations that it even wants to venture into investigating volcanic eruptions, has been eerily silent about these land deals.
Go there, Mr. Panelo. Start with the old PHHC lands, then go to the NGC lands, then conclude with the UP land deals.
You will uncover a treasure trove of corrupt real estate deals.