ARC 150

UP-FB1-BSAR5-03

HOUSING

Research Work No.2:

College of Engineering & Architecture

University of Pangasinan – PEN

Juan Carlos U. del Prado

03-1617-01307

Arch. Alexander Tendilla Doria

Instructor
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

A. Difference of Economic, Socialized, Medium-Cost, and Open-Market Housing

SOCIALIZED HOUSING……………………………………………………………..1

ECONOMIC HOUSING………………………………………………………………8

MEDIUM-COST HOUSING…………………………………………………………11

OPEN-MARKET HOUSING………………………………………………………...12

B. Cultural Beliefs in Housing

LOT / SITE LOCATION……………………………………………………………..13

CONSTRUCTION METHODOLOGIES…………………………………………...14

BEDROOMS / OTHER LIVING SPACES…………………………………………15

HOUSE ELEMENTS………………………………………………………………...16

STRUCTURAL / ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS…………………….………….17

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DIFFERENCES OF ECONOMIC, SOCIALIZED, MEDIUM-COST, AND

OPEN-MARKET HOUSING

1. SOCIALIZED HOUSING – (selling price is P450,000 and below)

Socialized housing refers to housing programs and projects covering houses

and lots and home lots only undertaken by the government or the private sector for the
underprivileged and homeless citizens which shall include sites and services
development, long-term financing, liberalized terms on interest payments, and such
other benefits by the provisions of the “Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992”.

Socialized housing is one of the housing segments in the Philippines that is

classified according to its price range and ceiling as defined by the Housing and Urban
Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC ).

Who are eligible to become Socialized Housing Program Beneficiaries?

The law says:
To qualify for the socialized housing program, a beneficiary:
a. Must be a Filipino citizen;

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b. Must be an underprivileged and homeless citizen;

Underprivileged and homeless citizens refer to the beneficiaries of the law on
socialized housing and individuals or families residing in urban and urbanizable areas
whose income or combined household income falls within the poverty threshold and who
do not own housing facilities. Underprivileged and homeless citizens include those who
live in makeshift dwelling units and do not enjoy the security of tenure.
c. Must not own any real property whether in the urban or rural areas; and
d. Must not be a professional squatter or a member of squatting syndicates.

Is there an incentive for the private sector to participate in Socialized Housing?

The law says:
Yes.
To encourage greater private sector participation in socialized housing and further reduce
the cost of housing units for the benefit of the underprivileged and homeless, the following
incentives shall be extended to the private sector:
a. Reduction and simplification of qualification and accreditation requirements for
participating private developers;
b. Creation of one-stop offices in the different regions of the country for the
processing, approval, and issuance of clearances, permits, and licenses. The
clearances, permits, and licenses shall be issued within ninety (90) days from the
date of submission of all requirements by the participating private developers;
c. Simplification of financing procedures; and
d. Exemption from the payment of the following:
1. Project-related income taxes;
2. Capital gains tax on raw land used for the project;
3. Value-added tax for the project contractor concerned;
4. Transfer tax for both raw completed projects; and
5. Donor’s tax for lands certified by the local government units to have been donated
for socialized housing purposes on the condition that the application for exemption,
a lien on the title of the land shall be annotated by the Register of Deeds. The
socialized housing development plan has already been approved by the
appropriate government agencies concerned.

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As for following basic services in socialized housing or resettlement areas, the

same shall be provided by the Local Government Unit (LGU) or the National Housing
Authority in cooperation with private developers and concerned agencies:
a. Potable water;
b. Power and electricity and an adequate power distribution system;
c. Sewerage facilities and an efficient and adequate solid waste disposal system; and
d. Access to primary roads and transportation facilities.
The provisions of other basic services and facilities such as health, education,
communications, security, recreation, relief, and welfare shall be planned and shall be
given priority for implementation by the local government unit concerned agencies in
cooperation with the private sector and the beneficiaries themselves.

Today, socialized housing is one of the housing segments in the Philippines that
is classified according to its price range and ceiling as defined by the Housing and Urban
Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC). Government housing agencies like the
Home Guarantee Corporation and private housing developers like the Subdivision and
Housing Developer’s Association use the following HUDCC classification or definition:

Socialized Housing - selling price is P450,000 and below

Economic Housing - selling price is more than P450,000 up to P1.7 million
Low-Cost Housing - selling price is above P1.7 million to P3 million
Medium-Cost Housing - selling price is above P3 million up to P4 million
Open Market or High Housing - selling price of the house is above P4 million

There are certain standards for socialized housing projects, which include the following
guidelines:
1. Socialized housing projects are currently set to a price ceiling of 450,000
pesos (as per HUDCC). This means that the maximum selling price of socialized
should be 450, 000 pesos

2. As per BP 220, socialized housing units should have a minimum lot area of
48 square meters (for duplex and single-attached units) and 32 square
meters (for rowhouse units).

3. Also, as per BP 220, socialized housing projects should have a minimum

floor area of 18 square meters.

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Actual Project for Socialized Housing:

Currently, socialized housing projects are being built in various areas around the
country. One of these areas is in Sto. Tomas, Batangas

6 Current Socialized Housing Projects in Sto. Tomas, Batangas area

1. Bella Vita Alaminos

Bella Vita is Ayala Land, Inc.’s foray into socialized housing. One of its sites,
Bella Vita Alaminos is located near Maharlika Highway, right at the boundaries between
Sto. Tomas, Batangas, and Alaminos, Laguna at Barangay San Andres, Alaminos,
Laguna. The project showcases mostly rowhouse (Poli End and Poli Inner
models) units alongside duplex units (Gemelli model).

Poli Inner | Lot Area: 36 square meters | Floor Area: 22 square meters

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2. Lumina Sto. Tomas

Lumina Homes serves as Vista Land and Lifescapes, Inc.’s socialized housing
subsidiary. Lumina Sto. Tomas is located at Barangay San Vicente, Sto. Tomas,
Batangas, approximately a kilometer away from Maharlika Highway. The project
showcases rowhouse (Airene) and townhouse units (Angelique).

Airene | Lot Area: 36 square meters | Floor Area: 22 square meters

Angelique | Lot Area: 36 square meters | Floor Area: 35 square meters

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3. Mountain View Homes

Mountain View Homes is Borland Development Corporation’s socialized housing

project. It is located at Barangay San Miguel, Sto. Tomas, Batangas, approximately 1.2
kilometers away from Maharlika Highway. The community mainly showcases 2-storey
rowhouses.

Lot Area: 28 square meters | Floor Area: 34 square meters

4. Primera

Primera is SM Development
Corporation’s foray into socialized housing in
Sto. Tomas, Batangas. The community was
developed by its subsidiary, Summerhills
Development Corporation. The community is
situated in Barangay San Pedro, Sto. Tomas,
Batangas, is approximately 2 kilometers from
Maharlika Highway. The community
showcases duplex (Bianca model) and
single attached (Cara and Angela models) units

Bianca | Lot Area: 57 square meters | Floor Area: 21 square meters

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5. Stonewell

This community is Rockwell Land Corporation’s

socialized housing project in Sto. Tomas, Batangas. This is
situated in Barangay San Pedro, Sto. Tomas, Batangas, is
approximately half a kilometer away (400 meters) from
Maharlika Highway. The community showcases mostly
rowhouse units alongside duplex units.

Lot Area: 40 square meters | Floor Area: 22 square

meters

6. Via Verde

Imperial Homes’ first socialized housing project in Sto. Tomas, Via Verde, was
notably the first housing project to include solar power as a source of energy, by
incorporating solar panels on the roofs of its houses. Via Verde is situated in Barangay
San Vicente, Sto. Tomas, Batangas, approximately a kilometer away from Maharlika
Highway. The community showcases rowhouse (Delsey) and townhouse (Tiarra) units.

Delsey | Lot Area: 35 square meters | Floor Area: 18 square meters

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2. ECONOMIC HOUSING – (selling price is more than P450,000 up to P1.7 million)

Everybody has the right to feel at home. Home is an important place to feel good,
it’s a place to gather with family or friends and for moments of restful retreats.

Economic Housing is developed to provide comfort with respect for budget and
environment. It contributes socially, economically, and ecologically to a balanced
colorful, and stronger society, enabling it to adapt in time.

Economic Housing is the new approach to economical and sustainable urban

development. Quality homes, industrially manufactured with healthy materials,
transported to the job site, and locally assembled with a minimum of resources. This
innovative process contributes to faster project completion and a significant reduction in
building and development costs.

Economic housing follows the lifestyle of its inhabitants. It adapts to any region
in the world and can transform concerning size and appearance.

Actual Project for Economic Housing:

Villa Verde Housing by Alejandro Aravena

Within a plan to support
its workers, the forestry company
Arauco decided to favor their
access to a permanent
residence within the framework
of Chile’s housing policy. There
were more resources available
for this project, as well as higher
than average building standards,
so this brought a perfect
opportunity to further develop the
incremental principles that had been successfully tested in previous projects, but with a
more ambitious initial and final scenario.

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The project proposes row houses with two floors, where the user receives half of
the buildable volume with basic, high-quality interior finishes. The initial area in each unit
is 57 square meters, reaching up to 85 square meters after completing the extensions.
The main advantage, in this case, is that the structure of the house is delivered almost
complete for the final state of the houses (shared party walls, pitched roof, lower slab,
and beams for the slab of the first floor), so the residents themselves only have to build
one slab and two outer walls. Furthermore, after the positive experiences of previous
participatory projects, here too the owners were invited to workshops about how to carry
out the extensions.

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Floor Plans:

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3. MEDIUM-COST HOUSING – (selling price is above P3 million up to P4 million)

Actual Project for Medium-Cost Housing:

Olivarez Homes Southwoods - Brgy. San Francisco, Biñan City, Laguna

PRICE: ₱ 3,800,000
House Type: Townhouse
Number of Bedrooms: 2
Number of Bathrooms: 2
Floor Area in sqm: 71.2 sqm.
Lot Area in sqm: 60 sqm.
Number of Floors: 2
Number of Car Parking Spaces: 1
Amenities: Basketball Court, Clubhouse

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4. OPEN-MARKET HOUSING – selling price of the house is above P4 million

Open Market Housing Units - means the Residential Units comprised in the Total Housing
Units which are not Affordable Housing Units.

Camella Homes - Teresa, Rizal

PRICE: ₱ 4,589,000

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CULTURAL BELIEFS IN HOUSING IN THE PHILIPPINES

A. Lot/Site Location
1. Go for square or rectangular
lots as they are thought to
usher a well-balanced and
harmonious home. Other
shapes are also welcome:
trapezoidal lots could mean
great wealth, and purse-
shaped lots, with a small
frontage and a wider back, are
thought to naturally collect money and fortune. Triangular lots, as challenging as they
are from an architectural perspective, are discouraged as they are believed to invite
accidents and conflicts.
2. Good luck awaits those who wish to buy that tract of land that has the presence of black
ants.
3. Certain regional groups discourage
buying of dead-end lots as they
cause financial misfortune or death
in the family.
4. It is best to cut down
aratilis/manzanitas trees that grow
on a lot you bought to prevent your
daughters from getting pregnant out
of wedlock in the future.
5. Finding a snake in the lot may be scary and dangerous but these reptiles are considered
good luck. Just make sure to remove the animal promptly — getting bites is not a sign of
luck.

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B. Construction Methodologies
1. It is believed that embedding loose coins
or religious medallions inside the
foundation can bring good luck. It is
believed that St. Benedict’s Medals mixed
in with each foundation can guard against
misfortune. Burying the medallion of St.
Joseph, a carpenter in the Bible serves
the same purpose.

2. The blood of a pig or chicken smeared on the

house’s foundation prevents bad spirits from wreaking
havoc on the home.

3. Wait until the full moon before pouring in the

foundation concrete as lunar cycles are auspicious
and as essential in housebuilding as they are in
agriculture.

4. Turning the posts in a clockwise position as they’re erected and fixed to the ground
makes a house resilient to typhoons that often wreak havoc in certain regions in the
Philippines.

5. Turn your home into a financially-blessed dwelling by placing an old coin on its doorstep.

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C. Bedrooms/ other living spaces

Living Rooms
Sunken rooms, like
basements, are looked at as
pockets of caves where evil
spirits can hide. It is balanced
off only when an exit lower than
the said room is provided. Some
Ilocanos do not want basements
altogether because of the belief
that only coffins should be found
under the ground. Old folks of
Sta. Maria, Bulacan advises that the floors of the living and dining rooms must be of the
same level. They say the imaginary “ball of fortune” must be able to freely roll across
both floors. Overly ornate living and dining room ceilings, especially those with cornices,
moldings, and other superficial decorations are avoided as it tends to make the ceiling
look like a coffin. Even the “mansard” or flat type of roof invented at the turn of the
century is avoided as it reminds people of a coffin.

Beds and Bedrooms

It is advised that one must plan
the doors of one’s bedrooms in such a
way that when it is opened, one would
face neither the foot nor head of the
bed. There should always be ample
space between the door and the bed
itself. Position the bed such that the
headboard does not rest against a
window opening. Neither should you
put any bed under a cross beam,
regardless of whether the beam is of wood or concrete, and position the bed so that the
occupant will not be lying perpendicular to the beam. Overly strict homeowners do not
have exposed beams at all even if these are veneered with different materials.

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For houses with second floors, it should be observed that no drainage pipe runs
inside or under the floor where the bed is located. Drainage pipes contain unclean fluids
associated with bad energies which may affect the good spirits of the people sleeping
over these pipes.
Do not place bedrooms in the basement portion of the house. It is always
preferred (luck-wise) that the bedroom floor is higher than the living room. Non-sleeping
rooms like the library, den, foyer, storage, etc. can be at a lower level than that of the
living room.

Bright Dining Rooms

As anyone who know s
Filipino cuisine, Kapampangans
love to cook (and eat), so most
of their dining rooms are
situated in the sunniest and
brightest locations of the house.
Ilocanos, on the other hand,
prefer subdued lighting because
they consider eating a solemn
occasion.

D. House elements
1. The house front should face the rising sun/east to
encourage sunshine through the front door, which
also brings warmth and prosperity to the home.
Likewise, kitchens are ideal to face the east to both
allow ample brightness in food preparation and
good fortune and happiness to those who partake
of the food prepared in such auspiciously located
kitchens.
2. The house should not face the west, as this can
bring financial difficulties, quarrels, or immediate death to its residents.

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3. Avoid placing toilets close or open towards the kitchen. In addition to sanitary reasons,
food must be held in high regard and its preparation close to the kitchen is perceived to
be a disrespect to the sacredness of dining.
4. Avoid placing a mirror across the main door of the house to prevent deflecting good luck
that enters.
5. Bedrooms should be planned so doors never face
each other or the stairwell. Doors should not open
towards the foot of the bed nor a headboard rest
against a window opening to ensure a long life.
Otherwise, sleeping positioned at any large
openings invites an early exit.
6. Make the surroundings airy by allocating a
generous amount of space to allow good
ventilation and sufficient lighting to create that aliwalas effect. Its opposite, kulob, is
thought to be the presence of unwanted entities.
7. Avoid sunken areas such as basements and depressed floor areas as they are believed
to collect bad energy and invite malevolent entities to linger in the house.

E. Structural / Architectural elements

Posts
In Southern Tagalog, posts are erected following this procedure: posts are laid
with their bottom ends at the footing on the ground and the top ends pointing towards the
east. The post nearest the east is the first to be raised. The same procedure is followed
for the other posts, one after the other in a clockwise direction as one reads the plan.
This same clockwise manner of raising the posts is practiced on the island of Romblon
and the belief is that it will make the house windproof.
The Tausugs equate the building of a house to the development of a fetus. They
believe that the first to appear in a woman’s womb is the navel. Hence, the first post to
be erected should be the main post within the interior of the house. In the Cagayan
Valley, meanwhile, the first post to be raised is the one positioned nearest to the
northeast. But this is done after the footings have been sprinkled with wine. The old folks
of Bataan caution against having a solitary post in the middle of a room. It is said to bring
misfortune to the family. This belief is also common in Tagalog areas and it is said that

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posts situated this way augur a “heavily laden” life (mabigat ang kabuhayan). The
Yakans do not use crooked wooden posts, especially the ones with knotholes in them
because they are said to symbolize death. In the older communities of Bayambang,
Pangasinan, it is commonly believed that termites (any) will not enter the house if the
bottoms of all wooden posts are first charred. Informed master carpenters, however,
suggest that these bottoms not just be charred but tarred as well. Others swear by the
potency of rock salt sprinkled generously in all footing excavations as preventive
measures against any infestation.
Old people also caution against cutting old posts for reuse so as not to lose one’s
wealth.

Stairs
An orientation towards the east is
also required for stairs. Ilocanos position
their stairs so that they rise with the
morning sun. To them, if it were the
other way around, meant turning one’s
back on fate. But builders in Pandi,
Bulacan, just like many typical Filipinos,
believe that a stairway facing east is
considered bad luck because, they say,
anything facing the early sun dries up ahead of all others, and in the same token, wealth
taken into the house will dry up much faster.
If there is no way one can make the stairs face east, at least make them face any
nearby mountain. If one’s lot abuts a river, position the stairs in a way that they are
facing upstream. This is so so that good luck from the house would never be washed
away by the river’s flow. In the same way, if the proposed house is beside the sea, or if
one is building a beach house, plan the stairs in such a way that they run parallel with
the shore. If the stairs are perpendicular to the shoreline, luck may flow in but also flow
out with the tides.
Also, it is not advised to place a large window in the wall directly facing the stairs
so that good fortune will not easily go out that window.
Most Western countries consider it bad luck to walk under a ladder. This can be
taken more as a safety precaution than a superstition. Locally, one should not make a

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passageway in any area under the stairs. Tagalogs never use the space beneath the
stairs as a sleeping quarter. The underside of wooden stairs of Ilonggo houses are
usually completed covered not because of peeping Toms but because the Old folks say
so. For business establishments, especially the small ones, the cashier or the place
where money is kept should not be located under the staircase. In homes, neither should
rice be kept there because it translates to treading on the grace of God whenever one
goes up or down the stairs.
When planning a structure with two or more storeys, the stairway should not be
positioned at the center of the structure so as not to divide the building into two equal
parts.
It is believed that the dried umbilical cord of a son or daughter of the house owner
inserted in the staircase will strongly bind the stringer with its supporting girder.

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REFERENCES:
Alburo Alburo and Associates Law Offices. (n.d.). Retrieve from:
https://www.alburolaw.com/what-is-socialized-housing-under-republic-act-no-7279-or-the-urban-
development-and-housing-act-of-1992

Arquitecturaviva. (2022). Retrieve from:

https://arquitecturaviva.com/works/viviendas-villa-verde-10

Galang, J. (2015, October 24). Retrieve from: Wordpress.com

https://jonathangalang.wordpress.com/2015/10/24/6-current-socialized-housing-projects-in-sto-
tomas-batangas-area/

Generalao, M. (2017, July 22). Retrieve from:

https://business.inquirer.net/233654/strategy-meet-12-3-m-housing-need

Onepropertee. (n.d.). Retrieve from:

https://onepropertee.com/2-bedroom-townhouse-sale-binan-laguna-property

Onepropertee. (n.d.). Retrieve from:

https://onepropertee.com/camella-drina-property

PPN. (2019, March 11). Retrieve from: Philippine Property.net

https://philippine-property.net/1993-filipino-homes-construction-beliefs.html

Rcozijn. (2011, April 22). Retrieve from: Slideshare.net

https://www.slideshare.net/rcozijn/economic-housing

Zarate, E. (n.d.). Retrieve from: National Commission for Culture and the Arts
https://ncca.gov.ph/about-ncca-3/subcommissions/subcommission-on-the-arts-sca/architecture-
and-allied-arts-2/filipino-building-beliefs/

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