Help with Food
During the last 2 ½ years since the earthquake the number of displaced Haitians has dropped from 1.5 million to just under 400,000 changing the look of a capital whose landscape was defined for many months by piles of rubble and fraying tent encampments.
But the progress is largely cosmetic. Although a few camps have benefited from aid programs, a grave underlying housing shortage means that the majority of those who left the camps have disappeared into the overcrowded homes of relatives or constructed precarious shacks in hillside slums, which is really another disaster to happen.
The recent clearing of the major public square Champs de Mars is one sign of how urgently Haiti's government and its image-conscious elite want to return public squares to normality.
On the eve of the earthquake it was estimated that 300,000 new lodgings were required in Port Au-Prince. And a post-quake survey showed 20 per cent of the estimated 414,000 buildings in the capital were damaged beyond repair, with 25 per cent needing structural repair.
The report shows reconstruction efforts have focused on building temporary shelters, which have absorbed 79 per cent of the $461m spent. A total of 109,000 temporary shelters have been constructed while only 5,000 permanent homes built.
All the above feels very strange and beyond my understanding somewhat. Why is everything so delayed and not happening?
