Haiti's Resettlement Plan Offers Little Hope

PORT-AU-PRINCE (March 10) -- As Haiti's dreaded rainy season comes into full flow, the issue of adequate housing has become more vital than ever for the 1.3 million people the United Nations estimates are still living in spontaneous settlements. Yet more than two months after the Jan. 12 earthquake, the Haitian government's first moves to designate sites for resettlement fall far short of addressing the dire needs of the homeless.

On March 2, after prolonged delays, the government quietly announced five sites around the city for potential resettlement of displaced people. The selection criteria for those sites are not transparent. Altogether, they have the potential to house only 30,000 to 40,000 people.

What's more, three of the five areas are privately owned, and tenure negotiations look tenuous. The asking price for the private land is said to be as much as $100 million. The international community has not allocated any funds for this purpose, let alone such an astronomical sum.

Since January, hundreds of makeshift camps have sprung up across the earthquake-affected region, including at least seven at high risk for landslides that would imperil more than 164,000 residents. The aid community's primary goals now are twofold: to meet immediate needs within the existing sites, but also to begin to move people out of the most dangerous and congested urban camps.

The five potential sites for transitional shelters have a total area of about 500 acres. Many Haitians and international observers suspect that the sites were hand-picked by the government in order to financially benefit their owners. The two government-owned tracts of land, Village des Orangers and Tabarre Issa, measure 75 acres and 30 acres, respectively.

The privately held sites include Village des Antilles, 60 acres of land originally intended for an exclusive Florida-style housing development, which was halted five years ago after construction problems. Roofs of the new homes collapsed due to bad materials. Today, only one model home remains intact.

When representatives of the International Organization for Migration, a U.N. agency, visited the site, they were unexpectedly greeted by the landowner, Jean Claude Verdier, who arrived smoking a cigar in a Mercedes-Benz. Verdier said his construction company, Antilles Construction, could construct "cheap" houses for Haitians there, but that he would initially only be able to make the land available for one year.

The two other privately owned sites are Corail Cesselesse and Sibert, each within 10 miles of central Port-au-Prince. According to IOM assessments, Corail Cesselesse may not be fully usable because of the presence of existing homes on the site.

Sibert, next to the village of Merger, is the biggest of the five sites, at 260 acres, and could house up to 5,000 people. The neighboring community is receptive to the potential new town, but plans will need to integrate the 500 people already squatting on that land.

Charles Clermont, a Haitian businessman who is leading the government's urban recovery commission, categorized the current situation regarding the lands as a "classic information gap." Though the government made a public radio address to announce that these five sites were available, they did not specify any details of the potential tenure agreements, he said. In the case of the privately held lands, the government essentially only pointed to them as being open to purchase.

Many in the international aid community initially hoped to provide tents for the displaced, but the current efforts of the U.N. and its partners have been focused on distributing tarpaulins made of plastic sheeting. By May 1, the shelter "surge" aims to distribute two plastic sheets per family. Currently, emergency shelter materials have only reached 41percent of people in need.

Despite this gap, the aid community is beginning to shift away from emergency shelter toward transitional shelters, which are intended to last years instead of months. Once land is formally allocated, aid organizations will construct these temporary homes.

Two model designs for transitional shelters were recently selected by the U.N. for what is expected to be one of the biggest -- and most expensive -- relocation and rebuilding efforts in modern history.

Erik Norremark, from Danish People's Aid, created the leading design. Using currently available local materials, his model home costs $1,000 to build, not including labor. If materials are imported, they are estimated to cost $500, all of which would be theoretically paid for by donor organizations, primarily the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Norremark's model is meant to be easily replicated and assembled with small local teams made up of a construction team leader, two assistants and three volunteers from the recipient family. The model was selected because of its size, price, ease of construction and hurricane safety.

The organization has already built a handful of these homes in Carrefour, gearing up for the big push toward transitional housing. Right now, it is focusing on building shelters on the existing sites of demolished homes. In some cases, this means skirting the issue of tenure, as well as generally established guidelines for housing design in a humanitarian context.

Yvrose Cadet, a resident of Carrefour, saw Danish People's Aid working in her neighbor's yard and asked them to rebuild her collapsed one-room home. The organization agreed, despite the fact that she rents her house.

"Yes, she rents," Norremark acknowledged. "But we will build the house, and it will belong to the owner. She will continue to rent. Anything after that, it's not up to us. ... In situations like this, what is better? Not to build her the house?

"Some people are coming in and saying, 'No way, if you rent we won't build for you.' But think about it -- the people who rent, they are at the bottom, they are the people who are really in need."

Cadet, who says the new house will be a vast improvement over her last one, will live in the transitional home along with her husband and six children. Once again, international standards are being bent, as the house is only designed for five people based on the guideline of 38 to 48 square feet per person.

The earthquake damaged or destroyed an estimated 285,000 houses, many of which could be categorized as "slum" housing and were already illegal or unsafe. Most of them do not warrant rebuilding, and many without clear property titles may not have the option of returning to their former homes anyway.

For those reasons, many Haitians share Cadet's view that a "transitional" home is better than now demolished "permanent" ones. But, as the Haitian government has demonstrated, the question of where to put those transitional units is complex.

"The key word for me is 'transitional' housing. That means we have to transition into something," said business leader Clermont. "My opinion is that we have to have some understanding of what we are heading towards. In this economy, in this country, to spend $150 million and claim it's transitional? Well ... some rules will have to be bent.

"If the law decides the land is for public use, then fine, we go ahead," he continued. "But the position of the government is that we have to negotiate with the private sector with due respect for their full rights under the law. We can't responsibly negotiate with a private person on the assumption of 'transitional' housing."