Revealing story about donated handbags

A LATE evening news program broadcast a report that celebrities had donated their designer handbags dubbed “Handbags for Hope.” The reporter said that the combined price of two bags would be enough to build a decent house. Who would ever have thought that the combined price of two of these bags would be enough to pay for the construction of a decent house, she asked in Filipino. I had mixed feelings that night. I was overwhelmed by their generosity. But that the combined price of two donated signature bags was enough to build a decent house tells a lot of the wide economic and social gap between the rich and the poor in our country, in our time. Housing is an issue of governance, and government is not supposed to delegate this responsibility to charity organizations or rely on the excess handbags of the rich. According to the Center for Women’s Resources, as of 2010, the country needed 3.75 million housing units, half a million of these for Metro Manila alone. The 2011 budget for housing is P5.7 billion (this means the housing budget per unit is P1,520 only), a pitiful amount especially when compared to the allocation of P357.1 billion for debt servicing and interest payments. Housing is not a separate issue from the basic and social services that the citizens must enjoy. Life is never an easy one in a society where hunger and poverty are a scourge to the majority and where sickness and lack of access to education are not only threats but a harsh reality. To be sure, the poor do not enjoy “housing security” as well. The charitable acts of the rich may make a tiny portion of the poor population happy, but only the dispensation of justice can ensure that basic and social services can be enjoyed by all.