Updated December 27, 2018, 12:20 AM
By Ben Rosario

The House of Representatives has passed on third and final reading, a bill that will ensure availability of sufficient land for socialized housing by tapping idle government land for the purpose.

Negros Occidental Rep. Alfredo “Albee” Benitez said House bill 8553 or the ”Idle Government-owned Lands Disposition Act” was approved following a 203 affirmative and 2 negative voting on the floor early this month.

Published November 13, 2018, 12:05 AM
MEDIUM RARE
By JULLIE Y. DAZA

(With apologies to The Hows of Us, a movie about millennials and how they get into and out of and back into relationships, which has grossed P700 million to beat Vice Ganda’s record-breaking P600 million take at the 2017 Metro Manila Film Festival.)

What do millennials, Generation X and Y and even their parents have in common?

Alas, it’s nothing romantic, for what the generations share over time has been the perennial lack of a house – before it becomes a home – to call their own. As more people are born, more houses need to be built, except that such has not been the case. Look at those sturdy, thoroughly lived-in BLISS apartments, in particular the ones clustered in the neighborhood of SM North, that have survived floods and typhoons since “Marcos time” and how they have spawned not a single decent tenement housing project.

The statistics on the houseless are a shame but not irreversible. Negros Occ. Rep. Albee Benitez, chairman of the housing committee in Congress, prefers to call the problem a need rather than a backlog. “Six million people need to own a house; they’re either renting, living with relatives, or simply homeless. In Metro Manila,” he adds, “only 30 percent of the population have the capacity to pay rent or buy a house.” After food and transportation, housing is No. 3 priority, gobbling up 25 percent of a typical salary of P10,000.

Updated October 12, 2018, 12:25 AM
By Ben Rosario

The House of Representatives has ratified the bicameral committee report on the creation of a Department of Housing and Urban Development (DHUD), a regular government department that will rationalize and coordinate the functions and powers of various housing agencies of the state.

Strongly endorsed for ratification by Negros Occidental Rep. Alfredo “Albee” Benitez, the report of the bicameral panel consolidated the two versions of the DHUD measure.

Published September 8, 2018, 1:44 PM
By Ben Rosario

The Visayan Bloc, an organization of Visayan-speaking congressmen, has called on the government to start immediately the construction of the P42 billion Panay-Guimaras-Negros island bridge, that will erase San Juanico bridge’s record as the country’s longest.

In a statement signed by VB convenors Reps. Alfredo ‘Albee” Benitez (PDP-Laban, Negros Occidental) and Jerry Trenas (NP, Iloilo), the legislators committed strong support for the project that is part of the Duterte administration’s “Build, Build, Build” program.