ARTICLE - HAITI'S TENT CITIES

HAITI'S TENT CITIES - NOWHERE TO GO
(The Economist) -

The government’s housing plan faces an uphill battle

IN THE past year the population of Haiti’s tent cities has fallen from over 1 million to less than 600,000. Sadly, that reflects official inaction rather than accomplishment. Most of the encampments’ residents, who moved in after the January 2010 earthquake, have left because health clinics and water distribution ran out, because landowners and mayors illegally evicted them, or because they gave up hope that aid might reach them. Today, the “people who could get out of the tents [have] already got out of the tents,” says Patrick Rouzier, housing adviser to the new president, Michel Martelly. Those who remain are “the most vulnerable, the hard cases, the lost”, says Leonard Doyle, a spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration.

Finding lodging for them will be one of Mr Martelly’s hardest tasks. Last month the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission, a body co-chaired by Bill Clinton that oversees rebuilding from the earthquake, approved the first portion of the government’s housing plan. Called “Six-Seize”, it aims to return residents of six prominent camps to 16 neighbourhoods in which they once lived, using a combination of rent, repair and rebuilding subsidies. If it goes well, the same methods will be tried elsewhere. The plan will also offer small, subsidised plots of land in new sites with access to roads and sanitation, and promote vertical building in some urban areas.

But even the plan’s first phase, which is only half-funded, faces hurdles. Secure housing is already scarce. Many of the 16 “communities of return” consisted of tightly packed concrete homes, which were either destroyed by the quake or were built on hillsides prone to mudslides and flooding. Rent aid may just push up prices, especially since landlords know that aid agencies are paying. “Even if they actually give us a $500 subsidy, it wouldn’t be enough for a decent house,” says Leslie Perrier, the vice-president of the camp committee at Place Saint-Pierre, the first camp targeted for removal. The government insists that the homes will be decent, if modest and cramped, and hopes that relocation will create construction jobs and develop the economies of poor areas. But based on the estimated cost to move just 5% of the displaced, housing all the tent cities’ residents would require $2 billion (30% of GDP).

A further difficulty is mistrust between the government and the camps’ inhabitants. Officials say they suspect residents of putting up “ghost” tents to become eligible for aid, running small businesses on prime property, committing crimes and renting out habitable houses while living in tents. For his part, Mr Perrier worries that those in power want to “remove us and hide us again” in hillside slums. Indeed, the encampments targeted by the Six-Seize plan are among the most visible to government and aid workers and to potential investors.

After the earthquake, NGOs and public officials vowed to work with ordinary Haitians to “build back better”. Donor fatigue and the extremity of the country’s poverty are now causing those hopes to wither.