MANILA, Philippines?Perhaps the least government workers could have done was paint the house on Moriones street in the campaign colors of the man who once lived there.

That they daubed the house in green?the battle color of one of Manuel Villar?s rivals for the presidency?may have been too much for Villar?s followers to take.

Old and decaying, its windows boarded up with plywood, the three-story structure in Tondo had apparently become an eyesore. In March 2009, workers of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority gave it a new coat of paint as part of the MMDA?s cleanup campaign. In a further show of zeal, they also scrawled the words ?Metro Guapo? on one of its walls.

(Towards the end of 2009, when the leadership at the MMDA changed, all MMDA public installations, such as footbridges, urinals, waiting sheds and the wire fences used to distinguish EDSA lanes, were repainted green.)

Villar?s staff members were upset.

?They were angry and asked why we allowed it to be painted in that color and why they weren?t told,? Villar?s niece and house caretaker Marilyn Bamba-Reyes told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

The MMDA workers also dismantled Reyes? small store on the sidewalk fronting the house.

No one lives in the decades-old, 60-square-meter house at the corner of Sta. Maria and Moriones Extension streets. A huge crack on one wall and other smaller cracks here and there that the green paint failed to hide add to its bedraggled look.

The stench reeking from the estero adds more melancholy to the house?s sorry state.

It is hardly the kind of house that a passerby would think was the home of one of the country?s few billionaires when he was still young and struggling to make it big, or a place that once sheltered a boy who now wants to be president.

The door to its interior was locked when the Inquirer came one recent Thursday.

In the frenzied campaign for the Philippine presidency, the house has become a political weapon. It was where Villar and talk show host Boy Abunda filmed an advertisement to show that the Nacionalista Party standard-bearer came from an impoverished past.

The talk among Villar?s neighbors, like Eduardo Torres, is that the house would be turned one day into a museum. A retired Constabulary soldier, Torres, 69, now drives a rental van.

As Villar barnstorms around the country on a promise of rescuing Filipinos from poverty, Torres and his fellow rental van drivers, have appropriated a shaded nook on the ground floor of the house and turned it into a ?tambayan,? or hangout.

It was in that corner, neighbors say, where ?Nanay Coring,? as they call the candidate?s mother, once ran a sari-sari (variety) store.

There, Torres and his friends wait every day for customers that would hire their services. In the searing summer heat, it doesn?t seem that any customer is going to show up at all.

In shorts and rubber slippers, Torres and others sit on a mobile cart that another neighbor has parked in the nook and uses at night for selling noodles, coffee and other snacks to taxicab drivers.

Steps away from the house, a man and a small family take naps on dirty mattresses spread out on the sidewalk, unmindful of the dirty water flowing in a nearby estero and of the flies swarming around them.

They seem to be the sort of people Villar would need to rescue if he should win in May.

The Villar house is one of several standing on a 300-square-meter lot at that corner of Moriones Extension. Neighbors say Villar has bought the whole lot and that the other families still living there have each been paid P50,000 to give up their rights to the place.

?That?s just the talk around here,? one of the van drivers said.

Some of the families have left but others are hanging on.

Villar?s generosity toward his Tondo relatives, like his caretaker Reyes, a woman in her 30s, is apparently legendary.

Neighbors say the relatives have received medical help from Villar or have been given houses in Cavite, where he built his fortune on low-cost housing.

Reyes said the senator had given her family a house in Parañaque but she chose to stay in Moriones so her children would be near their school.

?He has all the names of our relatives listed down because one can?t really expect him to remember all of us because we?re a big family,? Reyes said in Filipino. ?You can go to him and ask for help. Other times, it?s he who offers help.?

Torres said he himself had been a recipient of Villar?s generosity, even if they never really were close friends. In their teens, he said, he and Villar used to buy crushed ice together in the market for their mothers? fish businesses.

Torres said that when Villar was still a congressman, he waived the downpayment on a Camella Homes unit that Torres had bought for his family.

Still, there is no excitement, at least this Thursday, among the huddled van drivers over the thought that the boy who was once their own could be the next president.

Could it be that the scorching heat has melted their enthusiasm about the election, or that they have become jaded at seeing every election promise turn to smoke?

?Maybe if he wins, he could give us a job at Malacañang?s motor pool, or make us gardeners at the Palace,? one of the men said, raising laughter. ?Pwede na rin taga-bukas ng gate ng Malacañang (Or we can be gatekeepers).?

Will they vote for their own fellow from Tondo? The men stopped and looked at each other.

?I am still thinking about it,? Torres said.

Maybe May 10 will provide an answer to whether the old, grimy house on Moriones will end up as a museum, or turn once again into an eyesore.