PHILIPPINES — On May 14, 2026, Secretary Jose Ramon Aliling of the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD) announced a sweeping intervention that reshapes how the country processes housing permits. Undersecretaries have been assigned to specific regions to clear mounting backlogs, conduct performance assessments, and establish accountability mechanisms. The move follows an internal audit that corrected a long-standing assumption: the bottlenecks blamed on the Central Office were actually occurring at the regional level.
"Malinaw po ang direktiba ni Pangulong Marcos Jr.—pabilisin at mas ayusin ang serbisyo sa ating mga kababayan. 'Yan po mismo ang ating ginagawa upang mas mapabilis at maayos ang pagsusulong natin ng mga programang pabahay," Aliling said. The deployment aligns with the department's 8-Point Agenda, specifically the Zero Backlog Program and the streamlining of processes.
The Audit That Changed Everything
For months, real estate developers and industry stakeholders had pointed at the DHSUD Central Office as the source of crippling delays. The Chamber of Real Estate and Builders' Associations had publicly questioned regulations, warning that centralized processing could stretch timelines by 6 to 12 months. But when Aliling ordered an internal audit, the data told a different story.
The audit revealed that most regulatory applications—licenses, certificates, and other transactions—were pending at the regional level, not at the Central Office. Meanwhile, the Central Office had been monitoring pending transactions in real time and acting on them within allowable review periods. "Ibig sabihin, doable po ang mas mabilis na pagproseso at aksyon sa mga transaksyon inihaharap sa atin. Kaya, ganyan din dapat ang gawin ng ating mga Regional Offices," the secretary said.
The deployment of undersecretaries to the 17 regional offices is designed to replicate the Central Office's efficiency at the field level. Each official has been instructed to review performance, address pending applications, and institute reforms to prevent recurring bottlenecks. The message was unmistakable: delays that could be avoided in Manila should not be tolerated in the regions.
A Pattern of Reform, Not a One-Off Fix
The May 14 directive did not emerge from a vacuum. It is the latest in a series of reforms that Aliling has pursued since taking the helm of the housing department. On January 5, 2026, he ordered all regional offices to release pending 2025 Certificate of Registration and License to Sell applications with complete requirements by January 16—the 10th working day of the year. The department subsequently confirmed that compliant applications were processed within that window.
Senior Supervising Undersecretary Sharon Faith Paquiz, who has overseen the CR-LS streamlining initiative, noted that the policy covers the entire pipeline: "In order to achieve this output, Secretary Aliling issued a policy streamlining the process for the developer, applicant, Regional Offices, and the Bureau." The January push and the May regional deployment share a common architecture: identify where the delays actually are, deploy authority to that level, and monitor in real time.
The reforms carry particular urgency against the backdrop of the Expanded Pambansang Pabahay para sa Pilipino (4PH) Program, President Marcos' flagship housing initiative. With a national housing backlog estimated at approximately 6.5 million units, every month of delayed processing translates into families who remain in informal settlements, developers who hold back on project launches, and an economy that absorbs less construction activity than it could.
Digitalization and the Long-Term Fix
Aliling expressed optimism that the streamlining and zero backlog initiatives will become more sustainable once the DHSUD's ongoing digitalization program is completed. The department has been building a digital infrastructure that will eventually automate the tracking of applications, reduce the discretion that can lead to delays, and create an audit trail visible to both regulators and applicants.
For the real estate sector, the May 14 directive is a signal that the housing department is willing to investigate its own operations, publish the findings, and restructure accordingly. When an internal audit reveals that the bottleneck is regional and the response is to deploy undersecretaries to clear it, the institutional message is that no level of the bureaucracy is exempt from accountability. The deployment began this week. The developers who have spent months waiting for licenses will soon find out whether it worked.
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