‘Mole people’: invisible reality of the homeless in the Philippines
Photos of a woman crawling out of a sewer have sparked debate on the lack of help and authorities’ punitive approach towards those living on the streets
A woman is photographed emerging from a drainage hole along a street in Makati City in the Philippines. Photo: William Roberts
First, a head emerged from a drain hole in broad daylight. Then came arms and legs.
Like a scene out of a horror film, such was the eerie image that unfolded when a woman was spotted crawling out of a sewer on the corner of the streets of Adelantado and VA Rufino, one of the busiest areas in the financial district of Makati City in the Philippines.
The photo, which had quickly gone viral online and was later published by several local media outlets, was taken by a hobbyist photographer, who asked to be identified by the alias William Roberts.
Roberts told This Week in Asia he was taking photos around the area while walking home as part of his regular routine when the scene unfolded before his eyes.
“While waiting at a pedestrian light, [I saw a head] pop out of a canal. Since I was already taking photos, I framed her within the camera, kept taking photos, and she kept crawling out,” Roberts, who works in the software industry, told This Week in Asia.
As soon as the woman fully emerged from the canal, a police officer nearby spotted her and demanded to know what she was doing.
“I just kept clicking until she started running towards me … then she just ran past me,” he said.
Roberts posted about his bewildering experience on Reddit, asking if others had encountered anything similar. To his surprise, the photo immediately earned over 1,000 comments on Reddit and more than 10,000 views, and was later reposted to Facebook.
Online, people speculated about the strange image, with some sceptics initially suggesting it was a publicity stunt.
Local media called the anonymous woman “Rose”, who turned into a media firestorm as authorities searched for her.
The Philippines’ Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) later located her and announced it was granting her 80,000 Philippine pesos (US$1,435) in financial aid, designating her an “honorary social worker” to reach out to other street dwellers.
‘Mole people’
The media blitz around Rose uncovered a larger story: she was just one of a handful of people seeking shelter at a nearby drainage hole by a creek about a kilometre away from the hole where she was first sighted.
“The next day, I spoke to [an officer from the Makati Central Estate Association] who admitted that they didn’t know where the pipes go. They don’t know anything about the drainage system, [despite the fact] that they’re supposed to be managing and maintaining the city,” Roberts said, adding he had emailed several other government agencies on the matter but did not receive a satisfactory response.
Roberts later learned that the hole from which Rose had crawled out led to an underground drainage network of tunnels located in different parts of the city, including a creek by the Makati Medical Centre dubbed the “Makati Botanical Garden”, where Rose would take shelter alongside a community of about 15 homeless individuals – “mole people” that live and navigate beneath the city.
A man climbs out of a culvert in a creek in Makati City, apparently home to a small community of street dwellers in the Philippines. Photo: William Roberts
This Week in Asia visited the creek on Tuesday, which featured a large culvert – presumably the access point for Rose and other street dwellers to navigate its underground network of pipes.
The area was heavily polluted from the rubbish that had piled up along with the intermittent rain from the previous days. The stench from the waste filled the air.
However, the community of culvert dwellers was nowhere to be found, possibly frightened off by patrols within the area, which reportedly intensified after the story went viral.
The novelty of Rose’s case, as well as the government’s response, likely fuelled the story’s virality, according to Gino Antonio Trinidad, a doctoral researcher on urban poor settlement communities at the University of the Philippines’ National College of Public Administration and Governance.
“A lot of us are familiar with street dwellers of our urban areas, especially those subsisting underneath bridges or dwelling in cemeteries, but for a person to emerge literally out of a sewer in the capital region’s central business district is relatively new,” he told This Week in Asia.
Trinidad criticised the DSWD’s response as a “band-aid solution” and expressed dismay at the public reaction to Rose receiving cash aid, which led to a surge of online memes and jokes.
“Requirements to receive 80K from the government: a cutter and a drainage hole,” one cynical user wrote on Facebook.
“Wish this happened to everyone. Maybe I should also crawl into a sewer,” another said.
The reactions were “equally disappointing”, Trinidad said, adding that their key takeaway “seems to be how the poor get the better of aid from the government despite their supposed lack of contribution to the economy”.
Arvin Dimalanta, an adviser for the Philippine Resource Centre for Inclusive Development (Inklusibo), shared similar thoughts, adding that the cash aid was a modest figure in consideration of the hurdles homeless people like Rose had to undergo to afford housing, especially when facing displacement from demolition.
“When you rent a flat, they usually ask for a two-month advance deposit. Then there’s the expense of moving your things, and then other needs like your groceries. A family is lucky if that amount could last them two months,” Dimalanta told This Week in Asia.
A woman is photographed emerging from a drainage hole along a street in Makati City. There are about 4.5 million homeless individuals in the Philippines, according to a 2023 study. Photo: William Roberts
Invisible reality
Dimalanta added that the case of Rose and the mole people highlighted the invisible reality of the homeless in the Philippines.
There are about 4.5 million homeless individuals in the Philippines, with two-thirds of them in Metro Manila, according to a 2023 study by non-governmental organisations Joly Homes Foundation and Association Soeur Emmanuelle Philippines, Inc.
The Covid-19 pandemic had aggravated the situation on homelessness, as the lockdowns led to a widespread loss of jobs and increased poverty.
Dimalanta said these figures were “contentious” due to a lack of standard definitions of homelessness in the country, which could include informal settlers living in makeshift shanties in fixed areas.
The country’s laws on urban poor housing, the Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992 (RA 7279), and the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development Act (RA 11201) do not contain clear and explicit definitions of homelessness.
Those who live on the streets, working odd jobs such as cleaners or street vendors, or begging for alms while taking refuge in places such as bridges and cemeteries – or in this case, drainage holes – can fall through the counting cracks.
“You don’t know where they are, and they don’t want to be seen,” Dimalanta told This Week in Asia, who attributed this to the “criminal and punitive approach” that authorities imposed on the homeless.
Despite the government offering socialised housing plans for the underprivileged, many homeless individuals, such as those living in cemeteries, are unable to take part in these programmes because they are categorised as street dwellers instead of informal settlers, according to Trinidad.
Dimalanta stressed that standardising definitions of homelessness would lead to more effective and inclusive provision of services.
He added that the government needed to shift its punitive tone to that of rehabilitation.
“We don’t even have a homeless shelter,” Dimalanta said, adding that local governments could provide temporary shelters and help the homeless land jobs until they could afford their own homes.
Trinidad added that Rose’s story was a reminder of the “hidden costs of the ‘world-class’ aspirations of our urban regions”.
“What must be remembered is that the very same people actually contribute to the upkeep of such ‘world-class’ spaces.”
