I Hate the Housing Market

How do you define the Filipino dream in today’s context? I never heard of a term “Filipino Dream” in my decades in living in this now – warming world but I often heard of the term “American Dream” or sometimes “Chinese Dream” in media, so I was curious why the “Filipino Dream” wasn’t mentioned about that much. We already had many documentaries about the “American Dream” in various platforms but I haven’t seen a documentary about the Filipino Dream because it seems it is a new concept derived from “American Dream”. I could go on to say that my version of the Filipino Dream is an influence from the American Dream and to lesser extent, the Chinese Dream of living a good life, an ideal life that espouses the Filipino way of living while embracing the ideas from other cultures; A Filipino way of life that embodies the ideals of a Filipino culture that heavily relies on simplicity and humility which the richness of other ideals will be borrowed from. In short, the “Filipino Dream” talks about the simplicity in life, the virtue of patience for the Filipino masses and, in the modern times, a comfortable living space that would shape the unborn Filipinos for years to come. A very good example of this comfortable living space is a modern rendition of “Bahay Kubo” which is a pure Filipino home. “Bahay Kubo” is the right home for the Filipinos because it only uses the native materials like bamboo, “amakan” (weaved bamboo strips) and coconut leaf roofs that are surprisingly resistant from couple of typhoons and scorching heat in Filipino dry season and it also uses the talents of Filipino craftsman who can turn a normal house into a modern work of art using bamboos to build a modern “Bahay Kubo”. These Filipino carpenters must be paid handsomely if they built such an original works of art like the modern ““Bahay Kubo”. Bahay Kubo doesn’t need air conditioners too!

In short, the “Filipino Dream” can be summarized as having a simple home in a lush backyard which is in tune with Mother Nature and it is not calling itself for attention from the admiring eyes of modernity. We often use the word “Dream” to mean that we need to become rich or could afford luxuries or could attain some achievements to impress people or to impress oneself. For the American Dream, they mean that Americans want to buy a car, a house and luxuries in order to attain a comfortable life they so want by sheer hard work in an American economy that offers an equal opportunity of its inhabitants regardless of their race, gender and social status. Too bad that this American Dream that hoped by so many Americans are already unachievable in American economy that rewards rich people more and punish poor people more. The American economy in the eyes of the American Dream is contradictory to the American economy that are felt by millions of Americans today. An ideal American economy offers an equal opportunity of its inhabitants regardless of their race, gender and social status while the real American economy gives unequal opportunity of its inhabitants based from their race, gender and social status. For the Chinese Dream, they mean that the Chinese want to buy a condominium in a bustling city and must earn much money in order to attain a comfortable life they so want by sheer hard work in business in a Chinese economy that offers dizzying consumerism from its inhabitants regardless of their race, gender and social status. Too bad that this Chinese Dream that hoped by so many Chinese are already unachievable in Chinese economy that rewards capitalists more and punish poor people more. The Chinese economy in the eyes of the Chinese Dream is contradictory to the Chinese economy that are felt by millions of Chinese today. An ideal Chinese economy offers an equal opportunity of its inhabitants regardless of their race, gender and social status while the real Chinese economy gives unequal opportunity of its inhabitants based from their race, gender and social status. The real Chinese economy is driven by too much consumerism and capitalism that every human action that could be think of is now monetized, leaving too many people that couldn’t afford the basic services like food, school and healthcare. The Chinese cities are some of the most expensive places to live on Earth because of very expensive rents and unaffordable housing even in far – off provinces due to real estate developer’s hunger for money. For the “Filipino Dream”, it is a dream of simple life. A life away from worries of possessing wealth and luxury. A life away from capitalist ideologies that often tell the Filipinos to consume, consume, and consume to fuel the ailing Filipino economy and to acquire wealth and success that was unneeded from the first place. Many of our “kababayans” go abroad to fulfill the Filipino Dream of having a good life by working hard in an unfamiliar country so that they can feed their families.

As I was writing this piece, my ideas of Filipino Dreams keep on shifting from having a simple life to having a comfortable life for the family. Nowadays, one of the greatest exports of the Philippines are the individual Filipino professional themselves, may be it nurses, teachers, domestic helpers or seaman, among others. We are now exporting labor to other countries because those countries offer something that Philippines can’t provide while the Filipino professionals wanted what other countries could give; an opportunity to achieve a good life by working abroad and earn a higher salary that is much more that what they would make if they work in Philippines. The government keeps on trumpeting that Philippines has among the lowest unemployment rate in Southeast Asia because of the influx of money and investments from foreign investors who had no interest in the betterment of the Filipino people whatsoever because they had no idea how to do it or they didn’t think hard enough. Hell, I bet that they have never seen a poor Filipino before and all those peers that surrounds these foreign investors are always smiling at them which led to think that these foreign investors at all is well and it would be business as usual even if inequality between the rich and the poor continues to widen in the Philippines. Even with much investments and money poured into our little nation called the Philippines, most of the Filipino working class continued to be slapped by poverty even if the parents themselves are working which is a detriment to the Filipino child’s well – being. We already had double – income families in the Philippines but they feel the twice the power of poverty because of the psychological toll on their child. These investors want to use the Filipino labor to improve their companies but the same investors aren’t interested in improving the lives of the Filipino families themselves. The Filipinos have been improving the companies due to their hardworking attitude but if the companies are not interested in improving the lives of those people working for them, that is a straight – up slavery. Filipinos have an obligation to do their best while serving in a company and in exchange, the companies must have an obligation to improve the lives of their workers by paying them well and paying them promptly. That’s the least a company could do to realize the ordinary Filipino’s dream of having a good life. The prospective company must tell to the Filipino working class, “Please work for us and let us borrow your time and talents. We’ll give you a good life in exchange”. That is a very responsible company we seek.

I’ve seen many of my peers are getting into romantic relationships over the years and many of them are getting married or have plans on getting married in the near future that I wonder how they would pull off a married life with the kind of finances they acquired from working in a company that offered pretty low wages. I remember having a friend that has worked in a certain company that gives its workers a kind of salary that couldn’t support a family, much less her own family. After my friend got married, she and her son lived her mom’s house because the husband of my friend couldn’t afford a house yet. Even if my friend and her husband are both working to support their own family, their dreams of having a comfortable life for their son was shattered because of very expensive costs of acquiring a house in suburban areas. Housing market may be booming in suburban areas for the few rich people but it leaves many future homeowners in hopelessness because they could no longer afford a small house. Real estate has been heavily capitalized that a small house will be very expensive and the buyers will take drastic measures to get the house. A newly – married couple today will have much more difficulty in buying themselves a small house for their own family because it is very expensive and their combined salaries are too low for buy a house, so they would be forced to live in a rented room which costs almost a half of the salary of the breadwinner. What would be more shocking that they might have to rent this marital place for all their lives because the increase of salaries in an average professional moves in a snail’s pace while the increase of prices for the land and houses moves in such fast pace that a typical house that costs Php 1 million last year would be priced at Php 1.2 million pesos three years later. We can blame the real estate developers for this seemingly unlimited upshot of house prices.

If I ever became a rich person, I will not buy a house from a real estate developer and I would rather hire a group of skilled carpenters to build me a house because I don’t want these real estate developers to get rich because of me. People who could afford to buy houses bought from real estate developers are the reasons that house prices keep on shooting up because after one house was purchased, these developers might be thinking of increasing the prices of next unsold houses in increments because there would be always people who will desperately buy a house at an increased prices and they don’t care if their house would be unaffordable for the common masses as long as there would be people who will be duped into buying their properties at an even higher prices, especially that the supply of houses is chronically low and the demand for houses will always be high. These fat cows will take advantage of this opportunity to extract cash as much as possible to the detriment to the finances of the future homeowner. I’ve seen a billboard advertisement from one of the real estate developers displayed beside the road in Cebu City that we should have bought the house five years ago. The house was pretty decent themselves and it was a two – story house but I disliked the design. These developers are guilt – tripping us that we should buy a house today or it might be unaffordable in the near future (probably it might be unaffordable in less than five years) not because the house prices naturally (or should I say artificially) increase in price year after year but because the real estate developers aren’t interested in stopping the increase of their house prices and they had never done anything to make their houses affordable for the common masses. The kind of customers the developers are interested into are the rich people and never the common masses. No wonder that in USA, the housing market there was so bad that the big real estate developers has been building luxury houses in large tracks of land because the land themselves are expensive and the only way the developers could turn out a profit is by building luxury houses designed with the rich people in mind. Even the American middle – class couldn’t buy a decent home because they were so expensive even in suburban areas that they are forced to live in very far places to purchase decent homes there and commute to work for hours. And we know how stressful commuting is especially if you spend an hour commuting to work everyday. That extra time of commute could have been a time for work and for illustrative example: You get up from bed at 5 AM in the early morning, you prepare some food, took a bath and change clothes and you’ll be ready at 6:30 AM. You get in your car to drive yourself to office which is twenty –five kilometers away from your house and depending on traffic, you will spend driving in your car from one to two hours. You now have reached to your office at 8:00 AM, tired and stressed and now you will work for eight hours. After work, you will spend the remaining time but in reverse to your home and go to sleep because you’re too tired to do your hobbies. All in all, if a person has been given twenty – four hours to do something, eight hours was spent on sleeping, eight hours was spent on working, six hours was spent by somebody in preparing to work and only two hours was spent as a free time but it doesn’t matter because he was too tired to do everything and just drifted off to sleep. No wonder that we never learned a new skill while working because either we barely had enough free time to so something or we’re too tired to do something. It would be nice if we could buy a house pretty near to our offices but because of real estate developer’s greed, it would be impossible.

If many people couldn’t afford to buy a new house even in suburban ears, they had other options like renting a room. Newcomers who wanted to work in Cebu City couldn’t afford the houses there obviously, so they resorted to rent some rooms offered by the landlords which are themselves expensive and not worth the price. Prices ranging from Php 6 000 to Php 8 000 for a single room in an apartment is normal in Cebu City that a professional earning a salary of Php 13 000 per month would have a hard time making ends meet because not only that he should pay the exorbitant Php 6 000 per month rental fee to the claustrophobic space he occupied but he also needs to pay the basic utilities like electricity and water that would eat his salary even further. The rest would be sent to his family in province and the remaining money would be stretched out as long as possible until the next paycheck comes. This is literally the barebones version of living paycheck to paycheck because somebody would be waiting for the next pay to refuel themselves so they can get ready to fight for their lives with the little amount they prepared for the next month. Some people would tactlessly tell us to find a roommate so that the rent could be divided and it’s true because it lowers the overall rent one would someone pay because others can share the burden of paying it but on the other hand, we are actually encouraging the landlords to increase rents because in their own words, “The tenants can always find a couple of roommates to divide the rent, so I can increase the rent. Moneeeeey!” Paying the landlords half of our salaries so that we could live for another month, finding other roommates who will be interested in living with us so that we can share the burden of paying unfair rental fees and this action will encourage the landlords to increase rents is akin to adding gasoline to a blazing fire that will kill us all. These kinds of landlords are so many and so common in Cebu City that whenever I hear a landlord losing his paying tenants due to certain circumstances, I am pleased because in good times, these landlords has been sucking these tenants dry that it is their turn to suffer when he loses tenants in bad days. We often think that these landlords as rich because they now have a steady income derived from rents alone but when a pandemic comes, they aren’t as rich as we thought would be because they became so dependent on tenant’s money that they had nothing else to replace the preceding tenant because of his unaffordable rent. The only type of landlords I had compassion with are those landlords that doesn’t need somebody to pay him exorbitant fees, not dependent on rent money to survive, offers a room space that is very fit for human settlement and he must have a compassion towards his tenants. I wish if I had a business like that, I will build a rental home that is very affordable and very fit for somebody to live in. The landlords shouldn’t add the misery of the common masses by making the rooms unaffordable and spaces claustrophobic.

Our well – being is tied to our homes that whenever there would be a problem in the house like leaky pipes and toilet that wouldn’t flush, it seems like a thorn in our throats and we like to solve it as soon as possible. People who has spent their lives living in the same house for decades know it all too well. Good for them because they never had to experience the true terror of getting a house in a city or at least a suburban area in 2021. I once watched a documentary about the housing market in China and there was a Chinese woman interviewed who had experienced getting evicted from their room in a dilapidated building in Shanghai (or was it Beijing) because the building where she used to live will be demolished by the government and real estate developers to give way in constructing luxurious condominiums and to demonstrate that China is experiencing a housing boom. While she was interviewed, she was crying because she had no idea where to live now that her house was demolished by the government. Worse, she was forced to sign an agreement that barred her from suing the government or the developers if her house will be destroyed. Adding insult to injury, she was never got paid a proper compensation. While she was talking about her ordeal to get herself a decent dwelling in China, I remembered my parents who didn’t have their own houses themselves and has been renting rooms as long as they can remember. If my mother or father was in that Chinese woman’s shoes, I would beat myself to oblivion because I failed to provide them protection from these heartless developers and never had the finances to give them a home they have been chasing for all their lives. I’m one pathetic son if I couldn’t do that. I hate seeing my parents live on the streets and I have to do something to make their lives at least comfortable in their later years. Later, one day after the old Chinese woman was interviewed by the documentarists, she committed suicide by jumping from 14th floor of a building nearby. She could no longer bear the stresses of homelessness in a city that is bustling with homes, condominiums and townhouses. She could see many empty houses when she peeks through the window but sees the price tag that she couldn’t fathom why it was priced that way. There are too many of these people who had no other options to fight for their right for decent housing except driving themselves to nonexistence and we are helpless to help them. Very few people has the guts to fight the developers in order to defend their homes, often with mixed and tragic results.

The housing market was built by the rich people for the rich people that the developers themselves has been making the whole world a depressing place to live by making the lives of the common masses more difficult. By selling houses way beyond from most people’s ability to buy, the housing market has created a sharp divide between the rich and the poor. The rich can now enjoy the comfort of their homes while the poor masses have to work for decades in order to buy a new house and yet there is no guarantee that the hard work of these poor people will be paid off after working tirelessly for years, only to find out that house prices has increased so much that these poor people became more poor because their hard work didn’t keep up with the house price demands. Don’t even think about suggesting to the people to build a business because we know how luck plays a larger role in success than hard work and remember that you have more chances surviving a gunshot wound to the head (ten percent) than succeeding in business (one percent). What could the housing market do in order to at least alleviate the misery of the common masses with the resources they had in order to make their houses affordable for poor? In the early days, in the time of our lolos and lolas, they can achieve the Filipino dream of establishing themselves by owning a simple house and growing their children there using the hard work of our grandparents in their twenties. In the modern times, as the Millennials are now entering into their late twenties which are very ripe for romantic relationships, settling down and growing a family, having the type of finances they had now won’t be enough to sustain their future family because everything became so expensive that many of the Millennials are delaying marriage than ever before. The economy has failed them to provide a decent life that they will married in their thirties or even forties. Millennials might be the first generation where they are poorer than their parents when they are of the same age and the biggest culprit of the sorry state of Millennials having difficulties of raising families are the companies that offer low wages (there are too many of them here in Cebu City), the housing market (the only way to buy a house is to have a rich parents or be lucky), and the government’s indifference to the inequality perpetrated by the housing market, because after all, having your own home is your first step toward a comfortable life. We really don’t mind losing real estate developers if they only care for profits and not for the well – being of the ordinary people. I have yet to hear a real estate developer that screams “Please buy our homes. In exchange, we will provide you the best living space we can offer for you at the most fair price”.

Down to the housing market and their greedy auctioneers and developers! They don't have any social value anyway.