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I’ve always hated condominiums. Now, I live in one.

It’s not bad, really—a midrange 30-square-meter-ish, two-bedroom unit I share with my brother—certainly not the best, but it’s better than nothing. Unlike other condominiums around the metro, it has a one-hectare outdoor space that houses a wide grassy park, two function rooms, a café, a convenience store, and a couple of basketball courts. Not bad, right? But as much as I love the comfort, relative security, and privacy of this decent condo space, I yearn for the loud and chaotic life in a barangay.

A barangay, for context, is the local-most administrative district in the Philippines. In the provinces, where bigger barangays exist, barangays are subdivided into sitios. The term barangay was derived from “balangay,” a type of boat used by early settlers of pre-colonial Philippines. “Captains” serve as little presidents of barangays. They have their own councilmen (kagawad) and peacekeepers (tanod). The captains and councilmen are elected, while tanods are appointed by the barangay chief. People would fight over these positions as it usually entails money and power. Some even start their political journeys in the barangay setting.

Barangays usually have bigger populations, compared to gated subdivisions. The streets, basketball courts, playgrounds, and parks are all public. Barangays place a huge emphasis on community and shared resources, while gated subdivisions are big on exclusivity and tranquility. In a barangay, at least in the 90s, mornings aren’t complete without early karaoke belters, street drinking sessions, gossiping folks, market-bound basket-wielding mothers, taho vendors passing by as dogs dump their shit on the road, and kids chasing each other slowing down grumbling tricycles.

I spent the first eight years of my life in a busy barangay in Mandaluyong City.

Our home was a studio-sized basement in Barangay Barangka Drive—an urban hobbit hole inside a very narrow compound along the sloped Busilak Street. According to the Filipino dictionary, the word “barangka,” derived from the Spanish “barranca,” means a ravine. I’ve read accounts that our area used to be a hilly forest. My parents would occasionally recall enchanting folk stories surrounding those forested hills when they were young. They even remember seeing ruins of a Japanese garrison on top of the hill in the old days—remnants of the war.

Time, however, quickly passed, and that part of the hill became a private housing development that would later on become “Ayala Homes.” Our street, well—Busilak has always been anything but “busilak” (pure). It was a haven of loitering gangs of teenagers who would engage in random fistfights. At the small intersection down the street, Timog (south), teenagers would mount a makeshift basketball ring that would eventually become the venue of annual barangay-level leagues. There was a stone bench in one corner of that intersection where my dad and his friends would hang out. They used to hide rolled-up joints in the cracks of the brick wall behind that bench. It was along this street that my dad, an out-of-school youth, met my geeky mom. He wasn’t a cat caller but as they both recalled, my dad would dumbly hiss a creepy psst! as my mom walked by before melting into the shadows when my bewildered mom looked his way. I mean, it was the '70s so…I guess that was normal?

Busilak remained more or less the same in my time. I remember life there like a warm cozy blanket on a rainy evening. It was the early 90’s, and I would always wake up to the sound of news from tatay’s (grandpa) transistor radio. I have tiny bits of memory about news reports about a typhoon named “Rosing” and rotating blackouts. As I drank my hot chocolate across the table where tatay emptied his coffee, I would hear the kitchen hissing and crackling as nanay (grandma) cooked eggs and hotdogs for breakfast. The grumbling of engines from the busy street would join the morning orchestra. Sometimes, our neighbor, Ameng or Tita Bubot, would open their window right in front of our door and ask for some spare garlic, onion, or whatever. They weren’t different anyway—to us, they’re family.  Sometimes, they’d engage in brief banters (gossip), exchanging a few laughs to start the day.

We would go outside at around 6:30 AM and wait for our school service, a jeepney driven by the droopy-eyed Mang Joe Taba (Mr. Fat Joe in English). Nanay would ask us to lift our polos and expose our backs to the first light of the day. “That’s vitamins, son,” she would remind us often. As we stood there steadily like solar-powered wind-up trolls, we would see a mix of students and workers walk down the street. Mornings on Busilak were very busy. It was the main walkway for people going to the main transport hubs. In fact, just down the street, there would be a terminal for tricycles that could take you to EDSA, the metro’s main highway. Walk further, and you’ll reach Hulo, where a small boat would take you across the river to the business district of Makati. Seeing people walk while I bathe in the morning sun made me want to travel, too. I couldn’t wait to grow up. I wanted to be like them, exploring the world that was the city. I wanted to walk everywhere, see new people, and make new friends.

Afternoons were the time for kids and teens of Busilak. I was allowed to go out at around 5:00 PM (and only if nanay or Ate Ging was there to watch over). But I couldn’t wait that long. Classes were over at around 1:00 PM and I was usually done with siesta (though I often faked sleeping) at around 3:00 PM. Nanay would be busy prepping for dinner at 4:00 PM, that’s my cue to crawl and sneak past the kitchen area so I could go out alone. I would usually go to my neighbor Kuya John first and see if he’s free to play. We would then go to Camille and ask if she could join. There were more, but three was enough. We would play the usual patinteros, taguans, turumpos, teks, and habulans, but there was this game that we really loved—we called it the “Aswang Hunter” game.

We would imagine Busilak as the forest that it was once. In our heads, we were tanods armed with walkie-talkies and arnis sticks. We would scour the forest for signs of aswangs, ancient shape-shifting monsters from Filipino folklore, stealing and eating kids in the town center at night. Near the “hilltop,” we would see footsteps and drops of what seemed like oil. That’s it—we’ll rush to the top and see the lower limbs of a manananggal, a mythical creature that can separate her upper body from her lower body at night, sprout bat wings, and prey on unsuspecting victims. We would build a makeshift base near the site and bring in imaginary wreaths of garlic and containers of gasoline. We would put garlic on top of the mananaggal’s lower half, pour gas on it, and wait for the upper half to return. When she returns, the garlic will prevent her from connecting to her lower limbs. We wouldn’t wait for the sun to rise. Kuya John would give out the finishing line, “isang lighter ka lang,” a homage to FPJ’s famous “isang bala ka lang” movie line. He would light an imaginary cigarette and throw it at the gasoline-doused limbs of the monster. Run! Kuya John would shout. We’d run—in movie-grade slow motion—as the manananggal senselessly exploded. Damn it, that felt good. We felt like heroes.

We’d play several more games until sunset. I would try to delay my inevitable return to our house. Nanay would come out, ready to hit me with a broom. I didn’t want the day to end. I wanted to join the older teens and young adults who would hang out by the store, drink beer, play loud music on the stereo, and laugh the night out. I wanted to listen to their stories and jokes. I wanted to be like them, too. I wanted to be a lot of things, anything but a kid who had to follow nanay’s rules. But I had no choice but to go back to our hole of a home, eat my dinner, do my homework, and sleep early.

By the end of the 90s, our family would leave Busilak to live in our own house in a subdivision in Cainta, Rizal. I shed tears when we left. Despite the distance, I would always find time to visit the place. I still studied in Mandaluyong—hello, Kalentong Street. I even had a fling with a childhood friend there when I was around 15. I left Busilak, but it seems like Busilak never left me. Just this year, one of my kuyas in Busilak, one of those troubled teens when I was young, died. He was shot somewhere in Taguig. Me, mom, and dad went there to give our sympathies. Busilak looked like…well…it hardly changed. The young ones, those pesky teenagers, would still hang out on the street and make a scene. It was still as noisy as I remembered it to be. But there’s a hint of sadness seeing the old folks, childhood friends grow old and somewhat weary. Some of them were still there, some went on to become addicts, some left to work abroad. I wonder what really happened to them, how life treated them over the years. Where have the aswangs gone? I don’t know, maybe they weren’t as big of a problem as we thought them to be.

In high school, the more well-to-do students were already living in condominiums.

I remember visiting a schoolmate once in their condo—was it California Garden Square? it was a small, fancy-looking air-conditioned unit. Outside, there was a pool where we could hang out for free and drink some beer against the prying eyes of those pesky adults. It was a fun overnight with friends.

But when we woke up the next morning, it was so quiet. I suddenly felt a yearning for the usual noises of the barangay. I mean, at this point, we were already living in a subdivision in Cainta, but even that place had a comfortable level of noise for my barangay-nurtured ears. I was thinking of a word to describe the silence. It was as if the world was on mute. It was dead, I thought. A ray of sunlight went through the window to reveal a tiny galaxy of dust swirling and dancing in the cold air. I went back to sleep.

In 2013, I started to work in ABS-CBN. Going to the office meant a 1.5-hour, 4-vehicle commute from Cainta to Quezon City. I was already used to the traffic, so it wasn’t really an issue. But my work got a bit more demanding, it required more from my life and the time I was spending on the road—I needed it back. I started to ask friends if they knew any apartment units for rent.  One thing led to another and soon, I found myself a space inside a small condo unit.

Francesca fuckin’ Towers—it was my first taste of “condo living.” I inhabited a small private loft room—just enough for a bed, a small table, and a space-friendly closet. It had no windows. There were two other rooms adjacent to mine. A girl and her sister slept on the bigger one. The girl’s boyfriend, who eventually became one of my closest friends, was in the medium-sized room with a window view of the metro, side of Manila City.

We shared a living room, a cooking area, and one toilet and shower room. From time to time, the two lovers would fight. I would hear it from my room like a radio drama. I didn’t mind. Barangays had it better. When people fight in a barangay, you would think someone’s filming—two people getting into it, people watching, tanods trying to interfere. Watch an episode of “Face to Face”, a barangay version of that Jerry Springer show, and you’ll get a hint of what it’s like. No wonder nanay, who went on to live with us in Cainta, would watch every episode of “Face to Face” to remind her of life in Busilak.

Francesca was my home until 2021. In my last days there, I was already living with my then partner. We left at the height of the pandemic, hoping to find a safe and private place for us. My then partner and I went to live in yet another condo somewhere in Commonwealth, Quezon City. It was a penthouse studio unit with a view of the mountains of Rizal. It was a little more expensive than I thought I could handle, but it served its purpose—a place away from the dense areas of the metro at the height of a deadly pandemic. It was a really nice place. This was, perhaps, closer to what real life in a condo feels. It has a private area outside where you can walk and think about things. And think about things, I did. There were many things happening to me, to my ex-partner, and to my family at that time.

One time, I looked at our condominium building from the park area and thought that it looked like something. I mean, yes, I live and do my work there. But the resemblance was uncanny—the identical, boxy units stacked tightly together, row after row, with their uniform balconies like dark, recessed entryways, and the occasional flickering light within like a lonely vigil candle. It was like a stack of apartment-type tombs in a cemetery. The sterile, echoing hallways, devoid of the laughter and chatter of neighbors, only amplified the feeling. Each apartment door, identical to the next, seemed to seal away a solitary life, a world unto itself.  You'd pass someone in the elevator, exchange a curt nod, maybe a fleeting glance, but never a word—you wouldn’t even know if it was a real person or a ghost. It was like everyone was bound by an unspoken agreement to maintain the illusion of privacy, even in the shared confinement of that concrete monolith—our life boxed in a less than 20 square meters.

Loneliness crept into our very lives. My then partner’s depression got worse. We needed to get out of there. We finished our contract after a year and tried to look for a livelier area. Finding a home had been hard. The choices are bad—it was either you live in a cheap but extremely small and humid shanty-looking apartment unit in a barangay or a bigger one in a lively subdivision with a fortune to pay. It was hard to find something in between. We ended up in yet another condo. It was almost the same vibe, but this time, it was nearer to the dense areas of Pasig. So to say, it had a healthy level of noise and danger that a barangay offers when you go outside the condo compound.

And that’s how I found this midrange 30-square-meter-ish, two-bedroom unit I share with my brother.

It’s a rent-to-own unit that I was able to purchase through a 30-year-to-pay loan program by the government housing agency.  It means if my salary does not increase faster than the inflation rate, I’ll be able to finish my payment here when I’m already a senior citizen. Well, this home’s decent anyway. It has one full hectare of open space with basketball courts, a café, a convenience store, and a grassy park.

There will be a total of 22 buildings here in our community. It will be able to house around 80,000 middle-class people. For context, the entire population of Barangay Rosario where we’re in is around 73,000. Barangay Rosario, if online sources are accurate, the entire barangay is 30 times bigger than our condo area, but our community will be bigger than the entire barangay. Today, at least 20,000 people occupy all seven buildings in this condo community. What will this look like in, say, five years? No idea. Sounds like an interesting place to me.

But who am I to complain? Most working-class Filipinos, about 60.3 million of them, only earn enough for food, rent, utilities, and daily commute—not even enough for their health. Most of them will never afford to have their own home. Some of them, at least 3 million individuals, are already homeless by UN standards.

We need more housing projects, especially in the metro where people seek to change their (mis)fortune. But what are we getting? More condominium buildings. As of 2024, a property consultant reported an oversupply of condos across the metro. It shouldn’t come as a surprise when most government lands have been sold to the members of the One Percent Club. Instead of decent low-cost housing for the low-income majority, what we get are more commercial-residential properties that only middle- to upper-middle-class individuals can afford (in 30-year rent-to-own loan terms). Pretty soon, all of the metro is going to be part of a BGC of sorts. I mean, what’s bad about BGC, right? The BGC model, while attractive, is inherently exclusive. Extending this type of development to accommodate the masses raises concerns about affordability, displacement, and equitable access to resources.

There’s a reason why barangays have worked for hundreds of years. Its community-oriented structure, in contrast to the transactional and individualist nature of residential commercial spaces, is a solid foundation for societies with a more equitable distribution of resources and opportunities. If only corruption hadn’t rid us of the opportunity to innovate on the barangay model, we would have truly decentralized and empowered communities, less reliant on top-down governance and more capable of self-determination. But the rich don’t like it. They want us to rely on them—for food, for water, for home.

What is home today anyway? We probably spend more time at work and in transit than we do at home with our family. Home is supposed to be a sanctuary, a place of security and rest. But how can it be when the constant threat of rent, bills, and job insecurity hangs over our heads? Maybe we’re wrong about the idea of home—that it’s supposed to end at the doorstep, that it’s all within walls. Isolated spaces in stacks of concrete boxes—aren’t they made for the dead? We, the living—aren’t we meant to live collectively? Yes, we’ll have our houses, but home—maybe we are our home. And if we struggle together to take back our power, then we are home.