Sprawling across a 50-hectare property in General Trias, Cavite, the Cavite Mass Housing Project initially broke ground in 2008 as the Pamayanang Maliksi Cavite Mass Housing Project.

A flagship project of the provincial government (under the governorship of the late Erineo Maliksi), the Cavite Mass Housing Project was pegged at a total cost of P1.8 billion. Of this amount, P400 million came from the Asian Development Bank’s Development of Poor Urban Communities Sector Project¹ Homes for the Working Class | Asian Development Bank (adb.org) https://www.adb.org/news/features/homes-working-class . As explained in Homes for the Working Class | Asian Development Bank (adb.org), partnerships included the Philippines’ Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council and the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), which functioned as coexecutors.

The project, which involved land development and the construction of almost 4,800 housing units, was designed as a socialized housing project, strategically located to provide residents—especially factory workers and their families—with access to the economic centers (e.g., markets) and economic zones.

The ADB funding support was made possible under its larger Development of Poor Urban Communities Sector Project (DPUCSP)² DPUCSP Completion Report (PCR: Philippines: Development of Poor Urban Communities Sector Project (adb.org)) https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/project-document/61430/32499-01-phi-pcr.pdf . In the DPUCSP Completion Report (PCR: Philippines: Development of Poor Urban Communities Sector Project (adb.org)), the Cavite initiative was cited for being “the biggest and most successful of its kind” (p.3) within its cluster of five sub-projects known as part A.

R-II Builders’ commitment to the project is well aligned with the company’s solid track record as an advocate of socialized housing projects. As early as the 1990s, R-II was blazing trails in this sub-sector, with the first Build-Operate-Transfer and Mortgage-Take-Out housing projects; the first box-type, medium-rise housing; and, its pioneering massive resettlements for communities displaced by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.