Senator wants HUDCC abolished

Senator Sergio Osmeña III on Thursday sought the abolition of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), noting its apparent uselessness in the housing industry. "The HUDCC council doesn't make sense to me. It's like a superfluous body that is not needed in the housing industry," Osmeña said during Thursday's hearing on the Pag-IBIG Fund housing loan mess. The HUDCC supposedly supervises the operations of the council’s key shelter agencies such as:

• the National Housing Authority, which builds houses for all sectors and manages government estates for resettlement of informal settlers;
• the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board, which sets standards for housing projects, and as a judicial agency handles disputes between subdivision property owners and developers;
• the Home Development Mutual Fund, more popularly known as Pag-IBIG Fund, a trust fund that allows members access to housing loans;
• the Home Guaranty Corp., which provides government guarantees for loans that bankroll housing projects;
• the National Home Mortgage Finance Corp., which buys secondary mortgages; and
• the Socialized Housing Finance Corp., a semi-private government agency that manages funds for socialized housing.

During the hearing, former vice president and HUDCC chairman Noli de Castro explained that the HUDCC coordinates the operations and formulates the policies of these key shelter agencies. Lucille Ortile, who served as HUDCC secretary general, said the agency also oversees the sectoral plans and overall platform of the national government in the housing sector. However, she noted that the HUDCC council has been inactive since 2000. "The need to convene the council has declined," Ortile said. Osmeña, however, questioned why a council is needed to monitor the housing agencies. "If it were a line department it would be more understandable to me. [But] I could not quite grab the [need for the] existence of the council," he said. The HUDCC was formed in 1986 by then President Corazon Aquino, mother of incumbent President Benigno Aquino III, “to serve as the highest policy making body for housing and coordinate the activities of government housing agencies." It replaced the Ministry of Human Settlements, established during the Marcos administration. Vice President Jejomar Binay currently head the HUDCC. On Thursday, Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said HUDCC should be considered as a transition agency that would "metamorphose" into a "super-housing" agency to be called the Department of Housing. Marcos, chairman of the Senate committee on urban planning, housing, and resettlement, said the Department of Housing would consolidate the efforts of key shelter agencies and address the supposed "acute" housing shortage problem. "There are just too many government agencies catering to housing that do not have clear cut solutions and cannot put their acts together," he said in a statement. —KBK/VS, GMANews.TV