Legal Pluralism, Cultural Values, and Post-Disaster Housing Project in a Philippine Municipality

This article argues that cultural values can act as dominant norms and subvert the state’s official law in the awarding of post-disaster shelters to Typhoon Ondoy (Tropical Storm Ketsana) victims in a housing project in the Philippines. Applying some tenets of legal pluralism and some qualitative data from a case study, this article aims to show how the key Filipino cultural values of “palakasan,” “sakop,” and “padrino system” acted as the key unofficial laws or informal norms in the government’s post-disaster housing project for Typhoon Ondoy victims, thereby sidestepping the official legal provisions on the awarding of housing units to disaster victims. Specifically, it describes how these cultural values undermined the implementation of the official law on the qualification of applicants and proper awarding of housing units to beneficiaries under the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction Management Act of 2010 and the Urban Housing and Development Act of 1992 in the Southville 8 Housing Project (S8HP), a governmental post-disaster housing project in Rodriguez, Rizal. In a highly politicized environment with plurality of stakeholders and norms in S8HP, the official state regulations became colonized by some powerful groups’ dominant cultural values that acted as “unofficial laws” in the distribution of the housing units as shown by this study, resulting in the awarding of shelters to disqualified beneficiaries, forfeiting the intended effects of the state law. Ultimately, it argues that the law is not what the official state law says “it is’ but what powerful individuals and groups say “it is” in actual social practice. It debunks the belief of legal formalists who advocate legal positivism and centralism, claiming that the law can deliver what it promises under the “rule of law” principle.