Urban Planning leads the department in planning for housing programs and projects for the less privileged, specifically the informal settler families (as defined by RA 7279, UDHA, and RA 11201, DHSUD). It does this by facilitating the formulation of the hierarchy of plans, foremost of which is the department’s “raison d’etre,” the 9-year Local Shelter Plan, the implementation of which is concretized in the department’s (or the housing sector component) programmatic 3-year comprehensive development plan, and the project-level socialized housing subdivision plans. It likewise facilitates the process of permitting and licensing (which includes subdivision development applications of private developers, ensures that project proposals get implemented through public-private-partnership and similar schemes and facilitates the passage of relevant polices. While the guidelines and processes in preparing the Local Shelter Plan has been laid out in the LSP Manual prepared by the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (now Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development), CHUDD has appropriated some processes and spreads the timeline within a three-year period: first year, data gathering and initial review, to ensure that all relevant data and information are comprehensive and analyzed thoroughly; second year, for full review and strategies generation to ensure that these are evidence-based and well-thought-out, and on the third year, for plan approval and advocacy, to ensure that the process is exhaustive and inclusive. This does not mean, however, that these activities follow the said timeline as some data, for instance, have short update cycle and their timeliness are significant to further enhance the analysis and generation of strategies. Review and analysis may be started early for data and information that are easily accessible and have longer update cycle. The illustration below will generally explain the cycle of developing a Local Shelter Plan based on the LSP Manual (2016 Ed).

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