PALAYAN CITY, NUEVA ECIJA — Three years after its groundbreaking, the Palayan City Township Project in Barangay Atate has evolved from a blueprint into a community. Four residential buildings under Phase 1 now stand complete, and 198 families have settled into their units, no longer transferring their earnings to landlords but building equity in homes they can call their own. Under President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.'s Expanded Pambansang Pabahay para sa Pilipino (4PH) Program, the monthly amortization rates have become the quiet engine of this transformation—rates so low that beneficiaries describe them not as burdens but as bridges out of poverty.
The 23-hectare township, designed as a vertical housing community integrating residential buildings with open spaces and shared amenities, eventually expects to accommodate approximately 22,596 beneficiaries across 24 buildings. But the scale of the project, while impressive on paper, is not what moves the families who now live there. What moves them is the arithmetic of their monthly bills: an amortization that costs less than the rent they used to pay, a fixed obligation that does not spike with a landlord's whim, and the psychological release of knowing that every payment brings them closer to ownership rather than simply buying another 30 days of occupancy.
Voices from Barangay Atate
Donna Ramos, a 39-year-old fish trader, has spent years navigating the uncertainty of living on land that was never hers. "Ito po kasing pagkakapunta namin dito is malaki siyang impact sa amin dahil kasi yung dati naming tirahan hindi naman sa amin yung lupa. Pero ito kasi, masasabi namin sa amin na," she said. The sentence hangs, in its original Filipino, on the word "amin"—ours. It is a small pronoun that carries the weight of a lifetime's aspiration.
Vincent Geronimo, a 26-year-old medical technologist, sees the program through a wider lens, as evidence that homeownership need not be a privilege reserved for the wealthy. "Big help po siya para yung mga…normal Filipinos, hindi ganoong kabigat magkaroon ng own place mo na tatawagin mong home," he shared. His use of "normal Filipinos" is instructive: he is describing the vast middle and working classes for whom a housing loan has historically meant a 15- or 30-year sentence of financial anxiety. Under the Expanded 4PH, that anxiety is being recalibrated.
For Elsa Evangelista, a 28-year-old public school teacher, the housing program represents something more specific: the ability to save while paying down a mortgage, a combination that minimum-wage earners rarely experience. "Sobrang malaking bagay, lalo na kung minimum wage earner ka… hindi ka kasi nakakaipon… dito, habang maliit ang bayad mo… magkakaroon ka ng sarili mong bahay," she said. Her gratitude extended to the President: "Maraming salamat po rin kay Pangulo."
Charushin Tolentino, a 38-year-old government employee, brought the impact into even sharper focus by describing a family reunited. "Malaking bagay po na tulong ni President BBM to kasi po, una, sa bayad po na makakaya mo po na malaking tulong kasi nagkasama-sama kaming pamilya, na nakasama ko yung parents ko… ang gusto ko kasi makasama ko yung mama ko." The low amortization, in her case, did not simply shelter a family; it reassembled one.
The Numbers Behind the Hope
The subsidized interest rate anchoring the Expanded 4PH is as low as 3 percent per annum for up to 10 years, the lowest available in the Philippine market. DHSUD Secretary Jose Ramon Aliling confirmed that more than 10,000 families nationwide have already availed themselves of this rate. Monthly amortizations can fall below Php4,005 for a house-and-lot unit, and around Php7,589 for a condominium unit—amounts that, in many cases, undercut prevailing rental costs. The Palayan City Township units are priced at roughly Php1.3 million for a 29-square-meter floor area, with no down payment required.
Aliling underscored that the Palayan City Township reflects the administration's commitment to provide not merely shelter but dignified living and opportunities for a better life. "Dahil sa dekalidad, disente, mas ligtas at abot-kayang pabahay na handog ni Pangulong Marcos Jr. sa ilalim ng Expanded 4PH, nagkakaroon ng dignidad, seguridad at inspirasyon ang ating mga benepisyaryo," he said.
The Expanded 4PH now covers a wide spectrum of beneficiaries—from the working and middle class to informal-sector families—through modalities that include vertical and horizontal housing, rental housing, the Enhanced Community Mortgage Program, incremental housing, and housing under presidential proclamations. Rental housing projects are also underway in UP Diliman, Quezon City, and Los Baños, Laguna, among other pilot areas.
A Visit That Cemented the Commitment
On April 23, 2026, President Marcos Jr. himself walked the grounds of the Palayan City Township, accompanied by Secretary Aliling, to inspect completed units and speak with the families who now reside in them. The presidential visit, coming more than three years after the project's December 2022 groundbreaking, served as a bookend to a period of construction that has delivered four buildings and placed hundreds of families into homes they are paying off rather than renting. The remaining 20 buildings will rise in phases, and the project remains open to qualified applicants from Palayan City and beyond.
For the Ramos, Geronimo, Evangelista, and Tolentino families—and for the thousands more who will follow them into the Palayan City Township—the program's promise is no longer an abstraction. It is a monthly amortization they can afford, in a home they can call their own, on land that cannot be taken from them.
