Labella wants a ‘halfway house’ to shelter homeless

Street dwellers. CDN File Photo

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella today revealed plans to set up a hub to shelter the migrant homeless, similar to the Halfway House in Barangay Carreta, which shelters patients undergoing drug rehabilitation.

Labella said he wants to give the street dwellers who are not native of Cebu City a place where they can be temporarily fed, bathed, and clothed to prepare their return to their respective provinces or hometowns.

The mayor did not disclose the possible location for the halfway house.

The mayor said Cebu City will shoulder the cost of sending back the street dwellers back to their hometowns even if they have to be flown or transported by ship to their respective islands-province.

Hopefully, the mayor said, this will discourage them from returning to Cebu City.

“Eventually bring them to their respective towns, if it is necessary to bring them to the neighboring island like Bohol, by all means we will spend for their return there,” said Labella.

Labella said he has now ordered the survey of the number of street dwellers in the city and their profiles as well so the city can trace the street dwellers’ hometowns.

He said this is the way the city can clear the streets from street dwellers at night and lessen the chance for these homeless people to resort to criminality to feed themselves.

The hub will only be applicable for non-Cebu City residents as the informal settlers and homeless residents of the city will be housed in mid-rise tenements to be built in Barangay Lorega and Kamagayan.

Labella hoped that the hub can be established within his term so the problems of homeless street dwellers will no longer worry the residents of Cebu City./elb