QUEZON CITY’S ‘WAR’ AGAINST HOMEOWNERS, BUILDING OWNERS, AND LANDOWNERS

IN 2016, the city council of Quezon City (QC) enacted Ordinance No. 2556, which mandated a drastic revision of real property assessments. The Alliance of Quezon City Homeowners’ Associations, Inc. railed against it, as the ordinance estimated the upward adjustments to range from 100 percent to a whopping 500 percent. The kerfuffle it caused among city property owners rapidly grew into a city-wide outrage and protest against such confiscatory legislation, forcing City Hall to back down and “suspend” its implementation in a series of resolutions. The last “suspension”—only up to December 2022—was on account of the COVID-19 pandemic that eviscerated businesses and everyone’s livelihood and made payment of the exorbitant taxes infinitely more excruciating.

Despite predictions from experts around the globe that the myriad miseries the pandemic has caused in the lives and fortunes of people may well last beyond this year with no end in sight, no one in the current QC administration seems keen on mulling over any further “suspension”—or better yet, repeal—of that abhorrent legislation. For QC Mayor Joy Belmonte and her cohorts in the council, the die seems to have been cast: Whether the economy gets better or worse, the 2016 revisions will be rammed down the taxpayers’ throats in 2023—unless QC property owners unite and make their voices heard more loudly in next year’s election.

But with the multitude of “informal settlers” spread across the city having its back, City Hall is not likely to budge an inch more. Come election time in 2022, its candidates will simply skip meetings with property owners as they did before and once more concentrate on their “kumbaya” moments with their favorite constituents. More promises of material benefits for the latter will again be par for the course—with funds from real estate tax collections! Laging ginigisa sa sariling mantika, property owners now feel they have had enough of the insult.

Like any other local government unit, QC relies heavily on real estate tax collections for its survival.

But, pushed against the wall at this direst of times when they themselves could barely make both ends meet, apoplectic stakeholders are now contemplating a boycott scenario, daring to see how City Hall can find the wherewithal for the salaries, perks, and privileges of its supercilious officials and arrogant minions, let alone more funds for its operating expenses, with nothing but the “everlasting support” of their “captive constituents” who pay very little or no taxes at all.

Of course, City Hall will not be powerless to deal with any “tax revolt.” With tens of billions of public funds saved (ironically from real estate tax collections) and parked in banks over the years, it will survive—for a year or two. And it can ratchet up its countermeasures by taking over private properties all over the city and auctioning them off for “tax delinquency.”

But City Hall should not underestimate what lawyers can do to keep “due process” going for years on end. In the meantime, and with funds critically depleted, its own “captive constituents” may start jumping off the ship. The bottom line is, can QC politicians really afford a war of attrition against a juggernaut of homeowners, building owners, and landowners united in their self-defense against an ordinance that is about to get them slaughtered?