Public school teachers who are "homeless" may soon have the opportunity to have a house of their own through a housing loan with a fixed interest rate of five percent per annum.

This is one of the features of the housing loan that Rep. Rufus Rodriguez (2nd District, Cagayan de Oro City) proposed under a bill which he authored together with his brother, Rep. Maximo Rodriguez Jr. (Party-list, Abante Mindanao), a press release from Congress said. House Bill 4061 seeks to institutionalize the Public School Teachers Housing Program to provide housing loans for qualified public school teachers and which shall be administered by the Department of Education, a press release from their office said.

Aside from the low-interest rate, the housing loan is payable within a period of 20 years to 30 years, depending upon the age of the teachers at the time of approval of the housing loan application. Another special feature of the housing loan is payment of equity of not more than five-percent of the total purchase price of the property.

The bill calls for the creation of a Housing Secretariat in every regional office of the DepEd, which shall have the mandate to issue loan application forms and collect necessary documents. Another function of the housing secretariat is to receive and process housing loan applications as well as transmit the necessary documents to the appropriate housing agencies, among others.*

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