What Happened TO Manila town Part 3

Everything was dull at that moment; there was shouting and screaming coming from the upstairs, but because everything was closed off, everything was hard to hear. Once inside, the police were confronted by more protesters. Everyone was eventually beaten up. The fact that they just hurt people, they were in the process of removing senior citizens who are now in their rooms with medics. It was the last threshold. After making it through the crowd of protestors, the police used axes to open up the doors to rooms. In the end, to put a stop on this rampage, The tenants decided to stand down. They walked out one by one, each elder accompanied by an activist. By the next morning, the streets were cleared out. It was an event that was plastered all over national newspapers. It was all over the New York Times, The Boston Globe, and everywhere. People carried from the building were young demonstrators who had occupied some of the vacant rooms." Tenants were rushed out of the building. Many of them so quickly they left everything behind. However, national attention was too late. It couldn't change what happened to that night or its repercussions. The fight to save the last remnant of Manilatown was shut down. Moreover, the I-Hotels tenants were homeless. The city claimed to have set up replacement housing for the tenants. However, there were no such accommodations.

It was a lie, and There was not any place for them to go, they were kicked out into the street. People struggled to find places for them to sleep. Some of the people even collapsed and it was more than anything it was heartbreaking nonetheless. Families and their community were destroyed. The I-Hotel remained vacant for nearly two years, before it was demolished. Tenants were scattered throughout the city and Manila town was destroyed. We don't have any presence in the city. We have been here over 100 years, and Filipinos have been overshadowed and remain very invisible.

In 2005, Nearly 30 years after the first battle for the I-Hotel, Manilatown, and Chinatown activists accomplished a decades-long effort to build a new I-Hotel Today. It contains 104 Units of dedicated affordable housing for Senior Citizens. The I-Hotel carried a legacy of its community, and its struggle. One that still resonates in a city with a deepening affordable housing crisis. The failure of the city always was that they failed to build affordable housing, decent housing. It is the failure of a system that prioritizes property rights over human rights. Even if the past lingers there's still some valid hope that one day things might change. There is a new generation who is thinking about these things. Nevertheless, it is only possible if people think that housing is a human right.