“Unforgotten” informal communities and the COVID-19 pandemic: Sitio San Roque under Metro Manila’s lockdown Christianne France Collantes Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to offer Sitio San Roque, an informal settlement in the Philippines as a case study to explore long-term forgetful urban development planning in the Philippines, and the renewed visibility of the urban poor under COVID-19 lockdown. It connects scholarship on informality to issues of housing and political rights in Metro Manila to further investigate how vulnerable communities in the Global South are faring in the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach – This is an exploration of Sitio San Roque, an informal settler community in Metropolitan Metro Manila, Philippines. This paper refers to recent journalistic reports pertaining to the community’s ongoing evictions and arrests while under Metro Manila’s enhanced community quarantine. Furthermore, it converses with literature from disciplines including health-care policy, urban studies and recent studies on COVID-19 and vulnerable communities to critically discuss the plight of the urban poor in the pandemic-stricken Metro Manila. Findings – The urban poor and members of informal communities such as Sitio San Roque are especially vulnerable to contracting COVID-19 because of precarious livelihoods and housing instability. The creation of informality in Metro Manila can be traced to political tensions, economic agendas and development planning since the time of Marcos’ administration and also to global restructuring during the 1990s. However, also important to note is that under Metro Manila’s lockdown, informal settlers are further disenfranchised and stigmatized via ongoing demolitions and evictions, as well as by processes of policing and criminalization by the state. The use of military and police personnel as a way to enforce lockdown in the metropolis further impedes on the rights of informal settlers and the urban poor. Originality/value – Recent scholarship and reports discuss the challenges for informal communities and the urban poor in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly due to their housing conditions and loss of economic stability. This paper contributes to a critical understanding of these issues by adding the dimensions of political and housing rights. It refers to the case study of members of Sitio San Roque, who have experienced continuous threats of demolitions and arrests by state police for protesting the lack of government aid under lockdown. Both military approaches of governance and housing informality work in tandem to expose the vulnerabilities of the urban poor in Metro Manila’s pandemic. Finally, this paper extends on urban studies scholar Gavin Shatkin’s concept of ‘‘forgetful planning’’ (2004) by applying his discussions to the current context. Informal settlers have long been ‘‘forgotten’’ by the state’s development plans, but are now remembered and deemed more visible in Metro Manila’s ECQ. Keywords Philippines, Urban poor, Civil rights, COVID-19, Housing rights, Informal settlers Paper type Conceptual paper Introduction Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to present how political, social, and economic factors expose existing instabilities and issues in different geographic locales. The problems that the coronavirus present are especially daunting to the developing world, including those living in poor conditions and urban peripheries such as slums and informal settlements. According to a report by Corburn et al. (2020), “the informal settlements of the Global South are the least prepared for the pandemic of COVID-19. The toll it will take on Christianne France Collantes is based at the Department of Political Science, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines. Received 1 September 2020 Revised 10 January 2021 23 March 2021 Accepted 3 May 2021 Author sincerely thank the Jesse M. Robredo Institute of Governance for hosting her as a Research Fellow and sup-porting new research on COVID-19 in the Philippines. She also thank Caila Anne Flores, Jurnis Lanuza, Patricia Navarro, and Josiah Patricio for their research assistance for this work. Thanking to Brian Mojica and Jonathan Beltran for helping to shape the critical discussions in this piece. DOI 10.1108/IJHRH-09-2020-0073VOL. 14 NO. 3 2021, pp. 279-292, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2056-4902 j INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN HEALTHCARE j PAGE 279