Community-driven Disaster Intervention: Experiences of the Homeless Peoples Federation Philippines

This describes the experiences of the Philippines Homeless People’s Federation in community-driven measures to avoid disasters, in disaster preparedness and in disaster response. This is discussed in light of five disasters that had large impacts on low-income groups: the Payatas trash slide in Manila; the landslide in barangay Guinsaugon; the Mount Mayon floods and mudflow; the fire that devastated the Lower Tipolo Homeowner Association’s land in Cebu; and the flash flood in Iloilo. For each of these, the paper discusses the disaster, the response of the Federation and the lessons learnt.

The Federation is a national network of 161 urban poor community associations and savings groups with more than 70,000 individual members. It represents communities and their savings groups from 18 cities and 15 municipalities. Members promote community savings for building their own financial capacities and for community development and social cohesion. The Federation and its community associations are also engaged in a wide range of initiatives to secure land tenure, to build or improve homes and to increase economic opportunities. The Federation also works with low-income communities who reside in areas at high risk of disasters, and assists in reducing risks or, where needed, in voluntary resettlement; also in community-driven post-disaster reconstruction.

The paper describes the Federation’s national programme, which includes:
• Organization and mobilization of low-income communities in high-risk areas – for these communities, the Federation promotes and supports the scaling up of community-led processes for secure tenure, decent housing, basic services, disaster risk management and, when needed, relocation. Activities include: community visits; consultations; preparation of settlement profiles and community-managed enumerations and maps that can inform urban planning and community-led development initiatives; hands-on training; learning exchanges; temporary/transitional housing construction; land acquisition; participatory site and housing design, planning, construction and management; engagements; advocacy; and building learning networks among high-risk or disaster-affected communities.
• Citywide action: a move from a “micro” view of development to multi-stakeholder engagement that addresses members’ needs for secure tenure at the city scale.
• Forging and maintaining productive partnerships with the government at community, citywide and national levels, to ensure greater participation by the urban poor in policy formulation, citywide planning, relocation policies and implementation plans, development finance and in-situ slum upgrading.
• Policy advocacy, making use of pro-poor legal frameworks such as the Urban Development and Housing Act (1992), Local Government Code of 1991 and the Comprehensive and Integrated Shelter Finance Act (1994).
• Designing strategies for scaling up community-led slum upgrading citywide: this centres on a citywide Urban Poor Development Fund (UPDF) to mobilize development funds.

The paper also discusses the different factors that facilitated effective disaster response. These included savings groups within the settlements affected, which helped provide immediate support for those impacted by the disasters; also existing community organizations within the high-risk settlements that helped provide immediate relief and fostered social cohesion, with tools to support them taking action to resolve longer-term issues such as rebuilding or relocation. In communities lacking such organizations, visiting Federation leaders encouraged and supported their formation and capacity to act. This included:

• The stimulus to the above given by visits to the disaster site from teams of community leaders from the Federation, and community exchanges that support the survivors’ learning on savings management, organizational development, community surveys and house modelling (developing life-size models