CHICAGO (FinalCall.com) — A coali­tion of Hait­ian and Haitian-American activists are ques­tion­ing the Amer­i­can Red Cross’s strat­egy is dis­pers­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in relief aid to earth­quake rav­aged Haiti.

Seven months after the seven mag­ni­tude quake struck the island nation, the Red Cross has spent only one-third of the half a bil­lion dol­lars it col­lected in donated aid.

That penny-pinching, the coali­tion claims, has forced Haiti’s one mil­lion home­less to linger in unsafe, unsan­i­tary makeshift tent cities. The coali­tion crit­i­cized the lack of per­ma­nent hous­ing for earth­quake victims.

“When it rains and the hur­ri­cane comes, these fam­i­lies are sit­ting in mud,” said Lionel Jean-Baptiste, of the Hait­ian Con­gress to For­tify Haiti. “For there to still be 1.5 mil­lion folks under tents made of tarps and cloths, is a reflec­tion that the urgency is not being addressed.”

Of the $468 mil­lion the Red Cross has col­lected for Haiti relief efforts, it has spent $148 mil­lion. Accord­ing to Amer­i­can Red Cross doc­u­ments, the bulk of money has gone to shel­ter (35 per­cent) and food and emer­gency ser­vices (38 per­cent). The Red Cross could not pro­vide a break down in actual money spent in these areas.

“With the $468 mil­lion they have col­lected a lot more should be done,” Mr. Jean-Baptiste said. “We believe the Red Cross needs to be held accountable.”

The group is urg­ing the Amer­i­can Red Cross to build durable emer­gency hous­ing and part­ner with Haitian-led and Haitian-American grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions to bet­ter address the earth­quake vic­tims’ needs. The group also seeks a detailed account of funds raised, allo­cated and spent on Haiti relief efforts.

His­tor­i­cally, Hait­ian activists have ques­tioned how much non-government orga­ni­za­tions (NGOs), such as the Red Cross, have spent on admin­is­tra­tive costs ver­sus actual relief, Mr. Jean-Baptiste said.

Red Cross, he added, is the largest recip­i­ent of money from the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity with­out demand for trans­parency. They escape scrutiny, he said, while “Hait­ian lead­er­ship has always been seen as corrupt.”

The coali­tion points to the poor response the Red Cross and other aid orga­ni­za­tions gave dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina and Sep­tem­ber 11, where money for vic­tims was mis­ap­pro­pri­ated as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their concerns.

Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina is remem­bered not just for the dev­as­ta­tion the flood waters caused, but for the fail­ure of gov­ern­ment and relief orga­ni­za­tions, such as the Red Cross to meet basic human needs, said Tou­s­saint Losier, of Ris­ing in Sol­i­dar­ity with Ayiti.

Mr. Losier noted peo­ple were herded into the New Orleans Super­dome and con­ven­tion cen­ter. Then put on buses and blindly shipped to dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try. These deci­sions, Mr. Losier con­tends, were made with­out includ­ing evac­uees in the decision-making process.

Exclud­ing peo­ple whether it be Haitians or evac­uees from the decision-making process of rebuild­ing “their own com­mu­ni­ties dis­tances peo­ple even fur­ther,” Mr. Losier added.

“There is a par­al­lel to that and what we are see­ing in Haiti right now,” he explained.

The call for account­abil­ity is not iso­lated to the Red Cross nor is the coali­tion try­ing to make the agency the enemy, Mr. Jean-Baptiste said. There are 10,000 NGOs on the ground in Haiti, with lit­tle results to show for it. This call for account­abil­ity hopes to stress to the Amer­i­can peo­ple the dire needs fac­ing Haitians, he added.

State Sen­a­tor Kwame Raoul, who is of Hait­ian decent, echoed the coalition’s con­cerns. Mil­lions of dol­lars poured into the Red Cross where peo­ple believed their money was going to relief efforts not admin­is­tra­tive costs, he said.

“When some­body writes a check for emer­gency relief, they expect that money is going to be spent on emer­gency relief,” Mr. Raoul said. “I think that is why peo­ple are ask­ing for accountability.”

Rep. Danny K. Davis, an Illi­nois Demo­c­rat, under­stands that dis­trib­ut­ing resources in the midst of a dis­as­ter is daunt­ing. But he noted deci­sions should be made “expe­di­tiously as pos­si­ble” to give aid to those impacted the most.

A spokesper­son for the Amer­i­can Red Cross of Greater Chicago said the agency is being duti­ful in how it spends resources to pre­vent fraud.

“The fact that we spent only a third of the money that has been donated is great … because we are doing it wisely. We are not spend­ing it as fast as we can,” Martha Car­los, senior man­ager of mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, said.

The goal, she added, is sus­tain­abil­ity. Instead of pro­vid­ing some­one with a bot­tle of water, the agency wants to pro­vide water treat­ment sys­tems and other ser­vices for the long term, Ms. Car­los explained.

The biggest chal­lenge the agency faces to build­ing per­ma­nent struc­tures is secur­ing land. Ms. Car­los said there is no clear way to deter­mine land own­er­ship in order to build hous­ing on pri­vate land. Addi­tion­ally, land is still not cleared of rub­ble ham­per­ing efforts to build hous­ing for 150,000 dis­placed Haitians.

“In order to build per­ma­nent struc­tures, we need per­ma­nent land,” she said.

Rebuild­ing Haiti is an ardu­ous task—something the Red Cross and other inter­na­tional relief agen­cies can­not do alone. Rec­og­niz­ing that, agency offi­cials said they are work­ing with small non­prof­its on the ground in Haiti.

The Red Cross said it pro­vided $3.8 mil­lion to Part­ners in Health, a Haitian-led orga­ni­za­tion that oper­ates a hos­pi­tal on the island nation. The Haiti Red Cross is staffed by Haitians, accord­ing to the agency spokesperson.

Ms. Car­los noted that offi­cials at the Red Cross national head­quar­ters have worked to iden­tify smaller Hait­ian groups in Haiti and through­out the Dias­pora “to fig­ure out the best way to effi­ciently help.”

How­ever, the Chicago-based Hait­ian Con­gress to For­tify Haiti reached out to the Red Cross offer­ing sup­plies and ser­vices, but was flatly rejected.

Exec­u­tive direc­tor Aline Lau­ture said her orga­ni­za­tion “had loads of volunteers”—doctors, nurses and tech­ni­cians want­ing to accom­pany the Red Cross to Haiti.

“But we were told that they were not tak­ing vol­un­teers out­side of the Red Cross,” said Ms. Lau­ture, who speaks both French and Haiti’s native tongue Creole.

Ms. Lau­ture just returned from her sec­ond visit to the coun­try on Aug. 7. Haiti’s needs are great, but shel­ter is para­mount, she said. Camps are jammed with upwards 2,500 peo­ple. These tent cities are inad­e­quate for peo­ple recov­er­ing from trau­matic wounds such as ampu­ta­tion. There has been talk of plac­ing fam­i­lies in ship­ping con­tain­ers, she added.

“That is not good,” Ms. Lau­ture said.

Alia Kabba, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the United African Orga­ni­za­tion, also stressed the urgency for the Red Cross to part­ner with and release funds to Haitian-led and Haitian-American grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions. The UAO is a coali­tion of sev­eral African national organizations.

Grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions will be the ones left behind to rebuild their nation long after America’s atten­tion span has moved on to other issues, said Mr. Kabba.

“His­tory has taught us that no mean­ing­ful progress will take place with­out the active engage­ment of Haitians in the recon­struc­tion efforts,” Mr. Kabba said.

Some progress has been made in part­ner­ing with Hait­ian groups, Mr. Losier con­tends. His group has been press­ing these issues since March. The group will con­tinue to mon­i­tor the Red Cross and con­nect with other orga­ni­za­tions to see if the Red Cross is hold­ing up its end of the bargain.

“But they haven’t made progress in increas­ing the pro­vi­sion of hous­ing for peo­ple and for being trans­par­ent in terms of the funds they are spend­ing on admin­is­tra­tive over­head,” Mr. Losier said.

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