Squatters in Manila Lead Precarious Lives : Philippines: Many fled countryside only to end up in shacks along rail tracks, in vacant lots, on airport fringe.

Adelaida Vitales lives with her three daughters in a wooden shack not much bigger than a king-size bed. Just over the fence, workmen are finishing a high-rise luxury condominium.

Vitales is among the estimated 3 million “squatters” who live on other people’s property in metropolitan Manila, a city of 8 million.

Their presence lends a shabby air to the city, which lacks the order and glitter of prosperous Singapore or Tokyo.

Squatters are but one of Manila’s many problems:

* The potholed streets are clogged with horrific traffic.

* Air pollution is three times the maximum in official health standards.

* Garbage piles up waist-high in some neighborhoods. An estimated 1,000 tons is dumped daily into the Pasig River, which flows into Manila Bay.

For the squatters, living conditions are appalling.

Many fled poverty and a Marxist insurgency in the countryside only to end up in shacks along railroad tracks, in vacant lots, beside airport runways.

“We used to live in a two-story house; now we live here,” said Vitales, 55, pointing to a tin-roofed shanty. The bed she shares with her three young daughters takes up more than half the space. A teen-age son sleeps in a neighbor’s shack.

No social services are provided to squatters, so they survive by their wits. Vitales and 75 other families get electricity and water, for example, by tapping illegally into the systems that supply the nearby Quezon City Hall.

Her shack leans against a concrete fence surrounding an eight-story condominium and five-floor office building on the lot where she and the others used to live.

Manila has had little success in dealing with the squatter problem.

The Philippine government has too little money to build public housing or buy land for resettlement. Local plans get bogged down in the overlapping bureaucracies of metropolitan Manila, which is divided into four “chartered cities” and 13 municipalities.

Forcible evictions of squatters bring complaints, even civil suits by human rights activists who believe the right to a home overrides property rights.

A new national law prevents local governments from demolishing shanties built before March, 1992, unless new home sites are found.

Those living in such “danger areas” as streets and canals can be evicted, but Mayor Mel Mathay of Quezon City, chairman of the Metro Manila Authority, said many squatters refuse to move.

Many squatters who are awarded rights to settle in government relocation sites sell their permits to others and stay in the city, Mathay said.

Rep. Gregorio Andolana, chairman of the House Committee on Housing, said the solution lies in developing rural areas so people do not have to look for work in the cities.

“If basic services are there in the countryside, and there are schools . . . and there are hospitals, the people will not leave,” he said.