Alan Codizar’s family noticed the smell after two months inside their house in Catalunan Grande, a village about five kilometers from downtown Davao. “We thought it was the dog,” recalled Codizar’s wife Lourdes, “So, we moved the doghouse somewhere else but still the smell lingered.” Later, they opened the sewage at the back of the house and noticed that the pipes were leaking. The house was one of the low cost housing units of the South Villa Heights 2 awarded to them in 1994 under the Unified Home Lending Program (UHLP). But they only occupied it two years ago because the area did not have an access road and it was very far from their place of work.
BY GERMELINA A. LACORTE
Davao Today
Posted by Bulatlat
Alan Codizar’s family noticed the smell after two months inside their house in Catalunan Grande, a village about five kilometers from downtown Davao. “We thought it was the dog,” recalled Codizar’s wife Lourdes, “So, we moved the doghouse somewhere else but still the smell lingered.”
Later, they opened the sewage at the back of the house and noticed that the pipes were leaking.
The house was one of the low cost housing units of the South Villa Heights 2 awarded to them in 1994 under the Unified Home Lending Program (UHLP). But they only occupied it two years ago because the area did not have an access road and it was very far from their place of work.
The one-room 90-sq. meter house looked like an empty matchbox. They put jalousies at the windows, installed the doors and the tiles on the floors and later, the sewage pipes. “There were cracks even at the ceiling,” Lourdes said, “We can’t even nail something on the wall without feeling that the house would crumble.”
Just a couple of blocks away, Vidal Payao, 60, had lived in the area since the late 1990s but refused to pay for his amortization.
Together with 60 other homeowners, Payao sued subdivision developer Robern Development Corporation in 1994 for the substandard quality of the housing units.
“They used dilapidated plywood,” Payao said. “The sewage pipe was leaking and the drainage was so bad. They did not follow the prescribed plan. There was no light and water. Until the developer fixed our units, we refuse to pay.”
Robern denied Payao’s claims but an inspection by the Housing Land Use and Regulatory Board (HLURB) showed cracks on the walls, and leaking sewage pipes, aside from other deficiencies in the South Villa houses.
Payao and the South Villa homeowners won the case in 2000 but the HLURB Legal Services Group did not justify the homeowners’ refusal to pay their dues.
Lawyer Donna Ladao, housing and land use arbiter, ordered the developer to fix the houses, build an access road, drainage system and install the water supply in the area.
But she cited Section 23 of PD 957, saying that buyers can only suspend amortization payments to the owner or subdivision developer, but not to the lending or financing institutions where they secured loans for their housing units. Their contract with the developer is totally separate from their contract with their financier, said Lawyer Miguel Palma Gil, HLURB arbiter for Mindanao.
