Vice President and Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) chairman Noli ‘Kabayan’ De Castro called on the housing stakeholders to sustain the gains of the housing sector the last six years.

Speaking during the 4th Housing Finance Forum in Makati recently, De Castro said the present administration has put in place reforms in the housing sector but these, he added, are still necessary beyond the term of this administration.

“Alongside the reforms, we focused on strengthening the housing finance system, which is the backbone in the shelter industry,” De Castro said.

He said such system should be one where financial discipline is practiced in order to prevent excesses and where government acts as facilitator instead of regulator.

Sponsored by the Housing Guarantee Corporation (HGC), the forum showed De Castro giving his farewell remarks to partners who helped him put the housing sector in order.

“I look back at our years together and, modesty aside, I believe that we have many things to be proud of,” he said.

He said there is no need to worry after the elections as he expressed optimism that the housing sector would continue to grow.

Under the Vice President, the housing sector developed policy environment that lowered cost of housing units. Because of the series of interest rate reduction in Pag-Ibig, owning a house has become very affordable for the ordinary people.

De Castro was also very instrumental in the arrival of a secondary market for housing. Under his watch, the Home Guaranty Corporation provided guaranty to P341 Billion worth of credits and investments in housing which encouraged participation in housing construction and development and benefited around 1.2 million borrowers.

De Castro also moved the housing sector to aggressively pursue initiatives to provide security of tenure to informal settlers. From 2004 to 2009, around 724,000 families benefited from the various asset reform programs implemented by the National Housing Authority (NHA) and the Social Housing Finance Corporation (SHFC).

More so, De Castro paved the way for the issuance of 1 million licenses to sell to various housing developers.