“Transition to what?”
part 2 of 3
published August 23, 2011
T-Shelter Corruption
In addition to the land issue, another challenge for the T-Shelter donors also face challenges related to corruption. During its investigation, Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) found many displaced people and community leaders who denounced the corruption, and even the humanitarian agencies and organizations admitted to the phenomenon.
“Certain beneficiaries are renting or subletting their T-Shelter or are selling off parts of it. There is a real T-Shelter market,” Handicap International noted in the minutes of a meeting of the Petit-Goâve Shelter Cluster on May 31, 2011.
The mayor of that city, Marc Roland Justal, confirmed the traffic, saying he knew of many cases.
“It’s a deal. Once the shelter is in place, its demolished,” Justal said in an interview. “Since they are build of plywood, people can resell or rent the wood for construction.”
Not everyone things T-Shelters are that useful…
Local authorities as well as representatives of humanitarian agencies have differing opinons on the usefulness of T-Shelters.
Jean-Christoph Adrian, director of UN-HABITAT, the UN agency concerned with human settlement, doesn’t run out of criticism for T-Shelters and their distribution as a response to the housing problem.
“Why spend resources on a transitional shelter, if the same money can be given to people to reconstruct, and thus invest in the future?” he asked.
In the field, HGW journalists found a typical victim’
François Delous has lived in the Sentra Park camp in Grand Goâve since January 12, 2010.
Delouis survives with money sent by « New York » and by doing day-labor jobs in the marketplace. Every once in a while, he can save up US$5 or US$10 to use towards house reparations, but that’s it.
“My home is down there,” he said, gesturing.
“It needs repairs. Another house fell on top of it and my baby was killed. I can’t [afford to] repair my home. If I could, I would!” he deplored.
François Delouis in front of his tent.
Testifying at a hearing in Washington, DC, last fall, earthquake structural engineer and post-disaster expert Kit Miyamoto claimed many earthquake victims – about 120,000 families – could repair their homes with less than the cost of a T-Shelter.
“In most cases, these homes can be repaired in less than three days for $1,000 to $1,500,” Miyamoto told an Organization of American States meeting on October 27. “The math adds up.”
But Priscilla Phelps, Senior Housing and Neighborhoods Advisor to the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) and co-author of Safer Homes, Stronger Communities , a World Bank post-disaster housing book, notes that Miyomoto’s claim is not exactly correct.
“This sounds right on the surface, but in fact there is a significant capacity constraint on housing repairs in Haiti, having to do with the availability of trained contractors, and (to a lesser extent) decent materials. These are constraints that can and should be addressed, but they exist,” Phelps told HGW in an email interview.
In contrast, she noted, it’s easier for agencies to build T-Shelters because the land issue can be fudged, or even avoided if agencies can obtain land for a semi-permanent camp.
Adrian believes that “there is money for shelter” but that “the problem is that this money can’t be used for difinitive construciton because the funding mechanisms are emergency mechanisms, and they don’t permit the building of permanent housing.”
Many of the same agencies that built the T-Shelters had budgets for repairing or reconstructing houses, also. But a look at the numbers reveals where they put the emphasis.
Sources: Shelter Cluster and IHRC
In her email interview with HGW, Phelps regretted that reality:
“The claim is often made that the source of funds for T-shelters and the source of funds for permanent housing are not the same (the former being humanitarian funding, and the latter development funding)… but in these days of tight public budgets around the world, it is difficult to believe that the large expenditure on T-shelters has not reduced what may be available for permanent housing.”
Almost 18 months after the earthquake, the emergency phase continues
Almost 18 months after the earthquake, and desipte the fact that officially the “emergency” phase has supposedly ended, agencies are still building T-Shelters. Some – like Action Aid in Mariani, south of the capital – are even launching new T-Shelter projects.
Almost 90,000 T-Shelters have been built, with another 26,000 on the way to completion.
However, there are more than 634,000 displaced people living in tents in refugee camps. The number of remaining T-Shelters is not sufficient, as the humanitarian actors know.
“There are not enough provisional shelters in relation to the needs,” say the minutes of a Shelter Cluster meeting, held in Port-au-Prince on May 24, 2011.
But the money for T-Shelters has been used up, and even though Shelter Cluster officials, like Cathine Lefebvre, the former head of the Cluster for Petit et Grand Goâve et pour le Sud-est, have encouraged partners “to work for the long-term,” many agencies are actually finishing up the programs, folding up their tents, and heading home.
Indeed, the Cluster structure itself – tasked with coordinating all the various actors working on the shelter issues – is also closing down.
“The Shelter Cluster has no more presence in the regions due to lack of funds. It is not clear yet when it will close down and which agency will take over,” Lefebvre wrote to HGW on August 8.
End of part 2
Go to part 3 - Who is in charge and what's beyond the transition?
Go to "Being Broke is Nothing"
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