Current housing policies in place fail to account for disadvantaged groups. The Community Development Plan (CDP) of the Sitio San Roque community fully acknowledges these gaps and pushes for inclusive, decent, affordable, and community-centered housing. The process of crafting the CDP is community-based and resident-led to ensure genuine and long-term participation. From April to November 2019, face-to-face interviews and participatory workshops (i.e. counter-mapping, visioning, and designing) were conducted to investigate the resident’s conditions and needs, and to reflect those in the CDP. By December 2019, the CDP proposal along with a community profile was submitted by Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap – San Roque (KD-SR) and Save San Roque (SSR) to the Quezon City Government.

This housing affordability report uses socio-economic profiling (SEP) data taken from March to July 2019. The report primarily focuses on the findings tangent to the renting households’ Income and Rent Expense. It brings attention to the following significant findings that are vital for improving housing finance mechanisms of government instrumentalities for socialized housing provision:

1. Majority of the renting households’ monthly rent expenses fall along Php 1,500.00 or below.
2. Renting households whose monthly incomes are equal to Php 20,000.00 or above also limit their monthly rent expense to Php 1,500.00 or below; only a handful have gone beyond this amount.
3. Rent allocation of different household sizes ranges only from 6.53% to 9.92%; smaller households have a larger share of rent to total (monthly) income compared to larger households.
4. The poorest 10% (based on per capita income) of renting households dispense the largest share of rent to total (monthly) income at 14.20% because of the sheer scantiness of their income.
5. In order to survive, ISFs deliberately limit their housing allocation from their income in order to afford other necessary expenditures.
6. Precarious conditions of informal economy workers must be seriously considered and taken into account in the government’s programs in housing finance and socialized housing.

The report was used for the dialogues of KD-SR and SSR with the QC Housing Community Development and Resettlement Department last March 2022.

This is a publication under the Housing and Living Spaces program of Inklusibo.