By Bev­erly Bell, Other Worlds

Photo by Roberto Guerra

“Every­thing we owned got smashed. We lost everything.”

Getro Nelio was not refer­ring to the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake of Jan­u­ary 12. The unem­ployed, 24-year-old Hait­ian was speak­ing about los­ing his home a sec­ond time in three months, on this occa­sion due to the gov­ern­ment. Since late March, armed Hait­ian police have been clos­ing camps and destroy­ing the shel­ters that quake vic­tims cre­ated out of what­ever sup­plies they could scav­enge, from card­board to small strips of tin. U.N. troops some­times aid in the evictions.

The expul­sions and renewed home­less­ness come at a time of grow­ing urgency for per­ma­nent, sturdy hous­ing, with water, util­i­ties, and sewer, where peo­ple can sta­bi­lize their lives and rebuild com­mu­nity. “Decent hous­ing” is pro­tected by both the Hait­ian con­sti­tu­tion and the U.N. Inter­na­tional Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights.

Hait­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials and inter­na­tional aid agen­cies have revealed no plan to meet these needs or ful­fill these rights of the 1.3 mil­lion left dis­placed — one in nine cit­i­zens. Instead, rare pub­lic state­ments evi­dence con­flict­ing strate­gies for lim­ited, tem­po­rary initiatives.

In the after­math of the earth­quake, gov­ern­ment offi­cials spoke of mov­ing peo­ple to well-planned camps in advance of the rainy sea­son. In March, offi­cials sug­gested that peo­ple should resume res­i­dence in their for­mer homes, many of which they said were still hab­it­able. (Sur­vivors, some of whom watched the walls of their cracked houses lean more with each major after­shock, demurred.) The government’s offi­cial recon­struc­tion plan, pre­sented to inter­na­tional donors in March, asserts that it will set up tem­po­rary shel­ters in five locales which will become long-term hous­ing “with sus­tain­able infra­struc­ture and basic ser­vices,” but gives lit­tle detail of how this is to hap­pen. The gov­ern­ment has appar­ently acquired land to house 100,000 peo­ple, but some of it is far from jobs, schools, health care, and food mar­kets, as well as fam­ily and community.

Inter­na­tional agen­cies speak of con­struct­ing 130,000 “semi-permanent” shel­ters, some of which will have walls made of tarps. Some inter­na­tional agen­cies sug­gest that Haitians will con­vert their tran­si­tional houses into per­ma­nent ones, through such addi­tions as chicken wire and plas­ter. Mon­e­tary resources and mate­r­ial aid are in crit­i­cally short sup­ply among earth­quake sur­vivors, and it is not appar­ent how they will come by such con­struc­tion mate­ri­als. Some have not even found their first tent after a three-and-a-half month search, and remain sleep­ing on side­walks and in cars.

Hur­ri­cane sea­son begins June 1. This month, a Miami branch chief of the National Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter said that early signs sug­gest the 2010 sea­son will be “busy.” One fac­tor is warm water, and waters in the trop­i­cal Atlantic are at their warmest in recorded his­tory. A sec­ond fac­tor is that El Niño, which dis­rupts hur­ri­cane for­ma­tion, is likely to dis­si­pate this season.

Four storms that hit Haiti in three weeks in 2008 killed 793 peo­ple and left more than 310 miss­ing, accord­ing to Hait­ian gov­ern­ment figures.

Home­less Twice in Three Months

After the earth­quake killed Nelio’s father and destroyed the family’s home in Car­refour Feuilles, Nelio spent weeks try­ing to obtain a tarp or tent for his fam­ily to live in. His hopes rose and fell with var­i­ous promises of agen­cies and friends. Finally, a for­eign pho­tog­ra­pher whom he had befriended gave him money, and he bought a tent, plus wood and a tarp for a sec­ond struc­ture to house his fam­ily. The nine mem­bers include a child as young as 15 months and his 57-year-old mother. They took up res­i­dence in the Sylvio Cator soc­cer sta­dium along with about 7,000 other people.

On April 9 or 10 (Nelio was unsure, and press accounts dif­fer), Nelio said that “the direc­tor of the camp told us that the next day every­one had to leave the field.” The owner had allegedly demanded the sta­dium back so that the soc­cer teams could recom­mence their prac­tices and games there. “They said they were going to give every fam­ily 1000 gourde (US$24.84) and a lit­tle three-person tent. The next morn­ing, they started throw­ing peo­ple out. When it hap­pened, I had already left, and my mother had gone out to look for another place to live. Peo­ple orga­nized a demon­stra­tion to demand the aid they promised us.

“When that hap­pened, they sent in CIMO [anti-riot squads] to crush our houses and beat us with sticks as though we were dogs. By the time my mother and I got back, they had already destroyed our lit­tle house. One CIMO offi­cer beat me on the head, cut­ting it open. He beat me on the chest and the back, he pushed me, he pulled his machine gun on me. Peo­ple were shout­ing for help. My mother was cry­ing. I told her to relax,” Nelio said.

Nelio reported that at least some of those were present when the evic­tion started were given small tents. Nei­ther his fam­ily nor many oth­ers got new hous­ing sup­plies or assis­tance in relo­cat­ing. His fam­ily has had to sep­a­rate. Nelio is liv­ing in another inter­nally dis­placed people’s camp, while other fam­ily mem­bers are dis­persed across town.

Few Options for Those Evicted

Sim­i­lar expul­sions have occurred at a hand­ful of other sites, and more are threat­ened. As schools begin to reopen through­out Port-au-Prince, res­i­dents of some of the 79 camps on school grounds have been evicted.

“The par­ents and MINUSTAH [the U.N. mis­sion] say that the fam­i­lies have to leave. We under­stand that, but where are they going to go? They have to give us some alter­na­tive,” said Miche­line Sainvilus, an unem­ployed mother of six chil­dren who has been liv­ing in a clus­ter of tents fill­ing a small street close to the cen­ter of town. Her own chil­dren are not in school because they lost their uni­forms when their house collapsed.

The U.N. mis­sion announced that the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment declared a mora­to­rium on forced evic­tions on April 22, but the gov­ern­ment itself has remained quiet.

In April, the gov­ern­ment opened a large camp called Corail Ces­se­lesse near the town of Croix-des-Bouquets, just under an hour’s drive from down­town Port-au-Prince. Three thou­sand peo­ple have already been relo­cated there from other camps, and 3,000 more are sup­posed to join them in the long rows of white tents on white gravel, with no trees or other shade. “It’s a desert, noth­ing but sand. What are they sup­posed to do in the sun in the mid­dle of the day?” Nelio asked.

Res­i­dents of the camp in the Champs de Mars park have been hear­ing rumors for weeks that they will be forced to evac­u­ate and move to Corail, but they claim no one has told them any­thing defin­i­tive about their fate. “Croix-des-Bouquets? I don’t know any­one there. How will I work? Where will my kids go to school?” said one woman from her open-air res­i­dence under a tarp. “I hear that it costs 100 gour­des ($2.48) to take the bus there,” said another. That is more money than most home­less sur­vivors see in days.

The gov­ern­ment has opened a sec­ond tent set­tle­ment, and sev­eral oth­ers are under devel­op­ment. Josette Per­ard, direc­tor of the Haiti office of the Lambi Fund, said, “The Hait­ian peo­ple are rebel­lious. If they don’t want to be there, they won’t stay.”

Uncer­tainty and Anger over the Future

Most who lost their homes in the earth­quake were renters, and have no way to reclaim either their for­mer lodg­ing or the rent which they typ­i­cally pay in six-month install­ments. Of those who own their home, sev­eral reported in inter­views, their land is now buried in rub­ble and they have no money to pay to clear it so that they erect a shel­ter. Port-au-Prince is an extremely densely packed city with lit­tle open land. Those who choose not to stay in one of the new set­tle­ments may be forced to recon­struct sub­stan­dard houses on steep hill­sides and ravines – exactly what caused such a high toll in the recent earthquake.

Anger is grow­ing among the dis­placed and their allies, with demon­stra­tions fol­low­ing suit. The Sup­port Group for the Repa­tri­ated and Refugees (GARR, by its French acronym) is one of many to denounce the action, releas­ing a state­ment on April 28 call­ing on the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment to “assume its lead­er­ship in car­ing for the dis­placed,” in accor­dance with the Guid­ing Prin­ci­ples on Inter­nal Dis­place­ment by the U.N. Office for Coor­di­na­tion of Human­i­tar­ian Affairs.

Those prin­ci­ples include the fol­low­ing (excerpted):

- National author­i­ties have the pri­mary duty and respon­si­bil­ity to pro­vide pro­tec­tion and human­i­tar­ian assis­tance to inter­nally dis­placed persons;

- All inter­nally dis­placed per­sons have the right to an ade­quate stan­dard of living;

- Author­i­ties shall pro­vide inter­nally dis­placed per­sons with food and potable water, basic shel­ter and cloth­ing; essen­tial med­ical ser­vices and sanitation;

- Author­i­ties con­cerned shall ensure [that] dis­placed chil­dren receive edu­ca­tion which shall be free.

From the camp where he now lives, this time in the Champs de Mars park beside the dec­i­mated National Palace, Getro Nelio said, “I’ve been aban­doned with­out any help. The Hait­ian state isn’t doing any­thing for any­one. I have noth­ing. I just sit here with my two arms crossed.”

——

Sources: Research for this arti­cle was con­ducted through live and tele­phone inter­views over the past six weeks. Addi­tion infor­ma­tion was gained from: Charles Arthur, “Earth­quake Vic­tims Face New Tri­als with Forced Evic­tions,” Noti­Cen, April 29, 2010; Ken Elling­wood, “Three months after the earth­quake, schools and busi­nesses want their land back,” Los Ange­les Times, April 29, 2010; Alter­Presse, “L’expert inde­pen­dent de l’ONU se les droits humains souhaite un mora­toire se les expul­sions de presonnes déplaceées,” April 30, 2010; Frank Bajak, “Tran­si­tional hous­ing slowly get­ting built in Haiti,” Asso­ci­ated Press, April 30, 2010; and Chris­tine dell’Amore, “Hur­ri­cane Could Push Spilled Gulf Oil Into New Orleans,” National Geo­graphic News, May 5, 2010.

Bev­erly Bell has worked with Hait­ian social move­ments for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walk­ing on Fire: Hait­ian Women’s Sto­ries of Sur­vival and Resis­tance. She coor­di­nates Other Worlds, www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which pro­motes social and eco­nomic alter­na­tives. She is also asso­ciate fel­low of the Insti­tute for Pol­icy Studies.

http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/another-haiti-possible/urgency-housing-haiti-II