IT APPEARS that the government is doing its best to catch up with the housing backlog of about 6.5 million housing units, that is according to their own estimates.
But how was the government able to come up with that estimate?
Did they base it on actual market demand, by computing the total number of people who could probably afford to buy new houses or condominiums? Or did they base it on the estimated number of people who are homeless?
If it is the case of the latter, what then is the government’s definition of homelessness?
Are they defining it as the total number of people who do not own homes? Meaning that those who are now renting are technically considered as homeless?
Or are they defining homelessness as not having a place to call home, regardless of whether it is rented or owned? If that is the definition, does the government have a criterion of what could be considered as an acceptable home?
In all probability, the building code is not so strictly enforced in the provinces, such that a shanty or a nipa hut could be counted as a home, even if it is only made of light materials.
But what about in the metropolitan areas? Could shanties be counted as homes, such that its residents could not be considered as homeless?
In other countries, those who are living in tents or some other makeshift dwellings are still considered as homeless, and I believe we should follow that criterion here.
I believe that if we follow the definition of homelessness as it is used in the other countries, the homeless rate in our country would probably double or quadruple, and that means that the housing backlog will also greatly increase.
If that is the case, how could the government catch up with the bigger backlog, since it appears to be struggling with the present targets?
Although it is a good goal to lower the homeless rate, assuming that the government is measuring that, I think that it would be better instead to keep track of the poverty rate, because the more people are liberated from poverty, the more people there will be who could afford to buy new homes.
By the way, the government does not seem to be measuring housing starts./PN
