Can I still increase the rent by 7 percent?

What are the pertinent laws, rules and regulations governing the lease of residential units.

For one, we have Republic Act (RA) 9653, otherwise known as the Rent Control Act of 2009. Insofar as the lessor's capacity to increase the amount of rent, Section 4 of RA 9653 specifically provides:

"Section 4. Limit on Increases in Rent. - For a period of one (1) year from its effectivity, no increase shall be imposed upon the rent of any residential unit covered by this Act: Provided, That after such period until December 31, 2013, the rent of any residential unit covered by this Act shall not be increased by more than seven percent (7%) annually as long as the unit is occupied by the same lessee: Provided, further, That when the residential unit becomes vacant, the lessor may set the initial rent for the next lessee: Provided, however, That in the case of boarding houses, dormitories, rooms and bedspaces offered for rent to students, no increase in rental more than once per year shall be allowed."

Due to our government's aim of continuously providing protection to residential tenants, while at the same time being responsive to socioeconomic factors which affect the availability and access to residential rental houses and units as well as the financial capacity of residential tenants, the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development has approved National Human Settlements Board (NHSB) Resolution 2023-03, dated Oct. 13, 2023, which regulates rent covering the period of Jan. 1, 2024 to Dec. 31, 2024 for monthly rental rates that do not exceed Ten thousand pesos (P10,000). Said resolution expressly states:

"WHEREFORE, pursuant to the foregoing, the National Human Settlements Board hereby RESOLVES, as it is RESOLVED, to continue the rental regulation for the period January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2024 under the same terms and conditions provided under NHSB Resolution No. 2022-01, that for as long as the unit is occupied by the same lessee, the rent of any residential unit shall not be increased by more than four percent (4%) for the monthly rental rates of P10,000 and below;

"PROVIDED, that when the residential unit becomes vacant, the lessor may set the initial rent for the next lessee, provided that in case of boarding houses, dormitories, rooms, and bed spaces offered for rent to students, no increase in rent more than once a year shall be allowed;"

Taking these tenets into consideration, we submit that one may only increase the monthly rental rate of ones lessee by up to 4 percent if the current rent is not more than P10,000, in consonance with National Human Settlements Board Resolution 2023-03.

If the current rental rate for ones residential apartment is more than P10,000, then one may increase the rent by 7 percent

Source: Manila Times

Donia, London: Fantastic Filipino food in the most soul-sucking part of the city

If you’re going through Carnaby Street hell, just keep going. Adobo will be your reward

They’ve renamed Carnaby Street. We’re supposed to call it “Carnaby” now. My cab driver said they’d reclassified it as a “quarter” so they could charge Carnaby Street rents in the less glamorous Soho side roads. Not, by any means, the most paranoid theory he expressed. Well, whatever they’ve done with the place, I think we can all agree it’s awful. It’s like a ride in a Soviet theme park, designed to convey the vacuity and decadence of western youth. It can only apparently be appreciated in mobs of 40, clad in identical puffa jackets, sharing two vapes and a litre vat of bubble tea.

Granted all the space in this magazine, I could not express the vileness of Kingly Court, the “dining destination” at the quarter’s joyless heart. I once had a temporary job as a security guard in a mall in North Carolina. I used to sit in the deserted food court in the small hours, entirely alone, wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. It was somehow a warmer and less soul-destroying place than Kingly Court. But the small clean room on the upper landing — light, bright and with whitewashed brick walls — is neutral and innocuous. Here is Donia, a small modern Filipino restaurant.

I’m not usually troubled by the acoustics of restaurants, but Donia’s are challenging. It’s a cruel and unusual battering with random fragments of unattenuated but enthusiastic food conversations. Probably what it’s like living inside Gregg Wallace’s head. I’d also like to express my undying enmity to the platoon of business bros at the next table whose knobs went all the way to 11 and were stuck on “transmit”. They obviously felt their squalid property transactions were “on a strictly need-to-know basis” but the bastards had decided we needed to know. There’s a special region of hell reserved for people like this. It’s basically them, me and an immersion blender for eternity.

The chicken offal skewer was easy to agree on and turned out to be half a dozen hearts on a stick with a dark, sticky sweet sauce. It was good, but I felt a little hard done by that they’d stayed entirely cardiac. I would gladly have extended at least into the hepatic or renal.

Adobo is regarded as a national dish of the Philippines — loved, celebrated and much debated. It’s a preparation of meat, poultry, fish or vegetables browned and then braised in vinegar and soy. The sour element is distinctive, unusual and stimulating. We Brits don’t use as much sour in our cooking as other cultures, and the effect on the palate can be every bit as transformative as the more familiar umami. Here, rather than a vast bowl of stew, they’ve made a smart little adobo of mushroom, which they’ve then used to make crisp fried croquetas. They were extraordinary, prompting me to reassess my life goals radically in favour of spending more time eating adobo.

We worry so much about eggs’ freshness here in the UK that we obsessively refrigerate them and panic when sell-by dates approach. The idea, therefore, of an egg brined for preservation is challenging to most of us. It calls to mind the pickled egg jar in the pub, only marginally less appetising than a pathology specimen. But we’re getting this catastrophically wrong. The Filipino way is to hard-boil and grate them on to a salad with chunks of fresh tomato. It looks like yellow snow, or what’s fashionably termed a “drift” of parmesan, but there’s no sulphurous egginess. There’s a very slight concentration of the yolk flavour and the salt picks it up further. Complex savouriness set off by a cool, crisp and neutral salad.

Kinilaw is a pickle of fresh fish in vinegar and citrus. In this case, the citrus is finger limes and the fish sea bream . . . but you guessed that. All fish in London at the moment seems to be sea bream. I’m not complaining, I just can’t work out if there can be any left in the sea. But all that fresh lightness was going to need a counterweight, and it came in the form of lechón.

Lechón is suckling pig, usually roasted whole with much effort spent over the crackling. The flesh is subtly flavoured and creamy, the skin a filigree matrix of gold, like the inside of a Crunchie bar. At Donia they serve just a piece, which by itself provoked moans of joy at the table, but it was as nothing beside The Astonishing Sauce. It was an extremely unprepossessing colour. What Farrow & Ball would probably call “Support Hose Beige” but it was made of puréed chicken livers, vinegar, soy and sugar. If you can imagine all the things you love about chicken liver parfait that elevate it beyond school-dinner liver. That. Poured over pig. This incarnation was also fired up with peppercorns. Shameless lily gilding that I can only endorse.

In the circumstances, it seemed just silly not to go the extra mile and order the fresh grilled half lobster, “ginataan”, humming with the scorched-shell redolence of a beach barbecue. It’s hard to do it justice. Imaging two alien xenomorphs wrestling naked in a drench of delicately fragranced coconut curry sauce. Lots of ferociously dangerous bits but strangely erotic.

The food at Donia was fantastic, new to me and a delightful revelation. Service was outstanding, and the wine list was smartly chosen to survive a firefight of new and unusual flavours.

If I could find a way, I’d like to be spirited into Donia, possibly through a back door and into the lift, wearing some kind of obscuring bag over my head so I didn’t register where I was. After that, all I’d need is a table away from the business bros and about a gallon of that lechón sauce.

Donia

2.14 Top Floor Kingly Court, Carnaby Street, London W1B 5PW

Starters: £3.50-£20

Mains: £22-£82

Sweets: £4.50-£12

Source: Financial Times

Dealing with informal settlements

“The proliferation of informal settlements in the Philippines has become a phenomenon associated with big cities and expanding centers,” the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) reported.

“From the early 1970s to more recent years, estimates of the number of informal settlers in the country have varied, ranging from as low as 470,000 families to as high as 3.7 million families.”

In a study entitled, “Squatter Access to Land in Metro Manila,” Ton van Naerssen of the Ateneo de Manila University found that urban land is either unutilized or insufficiently utilized to address the growing number of informal settlers or “squatters”—people who settle on the land of another without a title or the right.

According to the study, “the ownership of land in Manila is concentrated in the hands of a few families. Land speculation plays an important role in urban land use… Squatting on land and building a shelter on it is not easy.

By consequence, many poor families try to find a place in already established spontaneous settlements, where the population density steadily increases.”

“Depending on the economic standing of families illegally occupying government and private lands without tacit approval of the owners, squatting is a social problem that is also rooted on distorted moral values,” Federation of Philippine Industries chair Jesus Lim Arranza earlier said in an article. “It is about time…for legitimate property owners like us to have our voice heard by political and business leaders, if only to send the message that we also have our rights as legitimate property owners.”

While the property owners’ voices remain to be heard by the proper authorities, they may still resort to court action to reclaim their lands from illegal settlers. Rule 70 of the Rules of Court (RoC) authorizes a person deprived of the possession of his land or building by force, intimidation, threat, strategy, or stealth, to file an action for forcible entry against the informal settlers with the proper Municipal Trial Court (MTC).

This action must be filed at any time within one year from the informal settlers’ forcible entry into the land.

In Zacarias v. Anacay, the Supreme Court held that a person is deemed to have waived his right to seek relief in the proper MTC when he fails to file the action for forcible entry within the one-year period.

The complaint and compulsory counterclaim and/or cross-claim pleaded in the answer, which are the only allowable pleadings to be filed in forcible entry cases, shall be verified.

In forcible entry cases, the MTC may, from an examination of the allegations in the complaint and the attached evidence, dismiss the case outright if it finds the same to either be patently without merit or manifestly intended for delay, or the issues raised are too unsubstantial to require consideration.

Otherwise, the defendant shall file his answer, which contains his affirmative and negative defenses and compulsory and/or cross-claim, where proper, within 10 days from service of summons, to which the complaint is attached.

Failure to plead said defenses shall be deemed waived, except lack of jurisdiction over the subject matter.

Meanwhile, the compulsory counterclaims and cross-claims not asserted in the answer shall be deemed barred.

If the defendant would fail to file his answer within the 10-day period, the court, on its own or upon the plaintiff’s motion, shall render judgment as may be warranted by the facts alleged in the complaint and limited to the relief sought therein. The court may likewise reduce the amount of damages and attorney’s fees claimed for being excessive or otherwise unconscionable.

The court shall set a preliminary conference within 30 days after the answer or, in the case of multiple defendants, the last answer, has been filed. The plaintiff’s failure to appear at the preliminary conference shall be a cause for the dismissal of his complaint. Meanwhile, the defendant’s failure to appear therein has the same effect as his failure to file an answer.

Within five days after the termination of the preliminary conference, the court shall issue an order, stating, among others: whether the parties have arrived at an amicable settlement, and if so, the terms thereof; the stipulations or admissions entered into by the parties; whether, on the basis of the pleadings and the stipulations and admissions made by the parties, judgment may be rendered without the need of further proceedings; a clear specification of the material facts that remain controverted; and

such other matters intended to expedite disposition of case.

If the court would find that further proceedings were unnecessary, it shall render judgment on said pleadings, stipulations, and admissions within 30 days from issuance of the order.

Otherwise, within 10 days from receipt of said order, the parties shall submit the affidavits of their witnesses and other evidence on the factual issues defined in said order.

Said affidavits shall only state facts personally known by the witnesses-affiants which are admissible in evidence, and shall show their competence to testify on the matters stated therein. Failure to comply with the requirement on affidavits may subject the party or the counsel who submitted the same to disciplinary action, and shall be cause to expunge the inadmissible affidavit or portion thereof from the record.

They shall submit their position papers, stating the law and the facts relied upon by them.

Within 30 days after receipt of the affidavits and position papers, or the expiration of the period for filing the same, the court shall render judgment.

When necessary to clarify certain facts, however, the court may issue an order specifying the matters to be clarified, and require the parties to submit affidavits or other evidence on the said matters within 10 days from receipt of such order. Judgment shall be rendered within 15 days after the receipt of the last affidavit or expiration of the period for filing the same.

In the meantime, the plaintiff may file a motion for issuance of a writ of preliminary injunction to restore him in his possession of the subject lot, which the court shall decide on within 30 days from filing thereof.

If, after trial, the court would find that the allegations in the complaint are true, it shall rule in favor of the plaintiff for the restitution of the premises, the sum justly due as arrears of rent or as reasonable compensation for use and occupation of the premises, attorney’s fees and costs. If a counterclaim were established, the court shall rule on the sum found in arrears from either party and award costs as justice requires.

The judgment rendered in an action for forcible entry shall be conclusive with respect to the plaintiff’s possession of the land, and shall not bar an action between the parties respecting the ownership of the building or land.

Thus, the Supreme Court consistently held that the sole question for resolution in an action for forcible entry is the physical or material possession of subject land. Even if the question of ownership were raised in the proceedings, the court may pass upon such issue but only to determine the question of possession, especially if the question of ownership is inseparably linked to the question of possession.

Upon motion, the court’s judgment in an action for forcible entry shall be immediately executory. If such judgment were rendered against the defendant, he may stay its execution by timely filing an appeal in accordance with the Rules of Court and filing a supersedeas bond to be executed in favor of the plaintiff. The supersedeas bond shall pay the rent, damages and costs due the plaintiff, accruing down to the time of the judgment appealed therefrom.

Considering that the parties never executed any lease contract, the defendant may be required to deposit rent equivalent to the reasonable value of the use and occupation of the subject land for the preceding month or period at the rate determined by the judgment of the lower trial court on or before the 10th day of each succeeding month or period.

The supersedeas bond shall be transmitted by the lower trial court, with the papers, to the clerk of the Regional Trial Court to which the action is appealed.

After the RTC decides the case on appeal, any money paid to the trial court for purposes of stay of execution shall be disposed in accordance with the provisions of the RTC’s judgment.

Squatter Access to Land in Metro Manila

.pdf

Download PDF • 749KB