Resettling families to places of their choice or to government-selected sites, with government assistance of some kind to achieve certain national objectives, has been a practice in the Philippines for many years. For instance, during the Commonwealth period, before World War II, low-income families in congested urban centers like Manila were encouraged to resettle in Mindanao which was then a frontier area. Aside from the objective of decongesting the cities, the government hoped to rapidly populate the island of Mindanao to exploit its natural resources and to attain self-sufficiency in staple food.
The resettlers were given advanced loans and were each allotted a few hectares of land for cultivation and for residential use. The government also provided the newcomers with essential community services and undertook the construction of roads to connect the resettlement areas to more developed urban centers or to port terminals.