SOUTENEZ la Campagne Zéro Expulsions #OccupyBulacan: 20.000 personnes!
To mark the International Women’s Day, Kadamay launched the #OccupyBulacan
campaign on March 8, 2017. Almost 5,000 members participated and successfully occupied around 6,000 idle housing in five relocation sites on the first day.
To date, about 20,000 members continue to sustain the campaign now covering Padre Pio de Pande resettlement, Pandi Heights BJMP Housing, Villa Luis AFP/PNP Housing, Pandi Residence 3, and Pandi Village 2.
Aside from lack of water and electricity, members are further forced to suffer from food and physical blockades, harassment and intimidation by private security, PNP and the military.
Government agencies led by the National Housing Authority (NHA) and Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) have only offered them an eviction notice in a formal dialogue. Ironic how it takes years for their process of acquiring supposed socialized housing and even then will most likely fall through, yet they say a mere seven-day period is the government solution to evict thousands of urban poor families currently occupying the resettlement sites.
Around 53,000 housing units for police and military officers nationwide remained unoccupied while there are thousands of homeless Filipinos who could have resided in similar units but unable to do so because the poor could not afford them.
Kadamay has been calling the attention of the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor (PCUP), NHA, and National Anti-Poverty about the urban poor’s plight since last year. It urged President Rodrigo Duterte to break off from past administrations’ neoliberal policies on housing and social services, and move towards free and mass housing policy. It also called for the government to address long-term solutions to housing and poverty and pushed for national industrialization and genuine land reform to finally resolve poverty.