P227M earmarked for 200 socialized housing units

AROUND 200 units of socialized housing will soon be available for Lapu-Lapu City residents with the approval of the P237 million supplemental budget on July 3, 2024 by the City Council.

Of the figure, P227 million will be earmarked for the socialized housing to be built on the donated two-hectare lot in Barangay Calawisan.

Vice Mayor Celedonio Sitoy, in an interview with SunStar Cebu on July 4, said the beneficiaries of the project will be the residents who will be displaced by the construction of the Coastal Road Highway stretching from barangays Pajo to Ibo.

Sitoy stressed that they will also prioritize underprivileged families.

“When we first planned the socialized housing project, we had already started counting on how many individuals would be qualified. We have not yet finalized how many are qualified, but we are looking into the list of individuals who really need the support. They are the priority,” said Sitoy in Cebuano.

Each unit of the socialized housing will have a floor area of 24 square meters.

The cost of each housing unit, which will be housed in a five-story building, will follow the standard prices set by the Department of Human Settlement and Urban Development, said City Councilor Annabeth Cuizon, chairperson of the Sangguniang Panlungsod Committee of Finance.

The two-hectare lot donated by Johndorf Ventures Corp. chief executive officer Richard Lim could accommodate about 1,000 to 1,500 housing units that could shelter more beneficiaries once the housing project is completed, said Sitoy.

Lim is hoping that the 200 housing units will be completed this year.

The 200 units are just an initial estimate and will be part of Phase 1 of the project, said Mayor Junard “Ahong” Chan in a press release sent to SunStar Cebu on Thursday.

A model house of the socialized housing project will be presented during the groundbreaking of the P25-billion Lapu-Lapu Expressway, the first skyway in the Visayas and Mindanao region, that will provide convenient routes from the Cebu-Cordova Link Expressway going to the Mactan-Cebu International Airport.

The schedule of the groundbreaking rites, which has been postponed twice already, has yet to be announced.

Meanwhile, the remaining P10.1 million of the approved supplemental budget will be allocated to the general fund, with P5.650 million, and the Local Disaster Risk Reduction Management fund, with P4.450 million. / DPC