Disaster Capitalism is Failing Displaced Haitians

From the balcony of her second story Port-au-Prince apartment, Mary Ander had a particularly good view of former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s tour last week of Haiti’s soon-to-be-launched “Building Back Better Communities” housing expo, a Haitian Ministry of Tourism competition that will result in the contracting of hundreds of new housing units for Haiti’s post-earthquake reconstruction.

“I love my house,” exclaimed Ander, whose apartment is part of an affordable housing complex known as Village de la Renaissance, overlooking the expo site Clinton visited last Wednesday, alongside Haiti’s newly inaugurated president Michel Martelly.

“I’m very, very happy,” added the resident of Port-au-Prince’s Zoranger region with a laugh, in an interview in the comfortable living room of her two-bedroom apartment.

According to Daniel Fauresmy, an engineer working with the housing expo, Ander’s building is resistant to both the earthquakes and hurricanes that have devastated Haiti in recent years. The concrete building is also constructed with supplies manufactured in Haiti, something that Fauresmy emphasizes is important, as the “best solution is to work with local materials.”

However, Village de la Renaissance, which was built in 2003 by the government of former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide, and aborted when he was ousted in a U.S.-backed coup d’etat in 2004, is not one of the models being considered in the expo competition.

Building Back Better Communities, which was one of the first projects of the reconstruction panel co-chaired by Clinton, and which is being backed by the Clinton Foundation, instead features many imported models. Among the 59 units on display, only seven are made by Haitian companies, according to Fauresmy, who estimates than at most 10 percent of the models in the expo rely exclusively on local materials.

After his tour of the housing expo, Clinton gave an address beneath a large white tent lined with vendors (many of them American) of assorted eco-products, from solar powered flashlights to composting toilets. Standing beside new Haitian President Michel Martelly (who sported a baseball cap with the words “Prezidan” embroidered on it for occasion), Clinton emphasized Martelly’s campaign pledge to move quickly on building housing for the thousands of people still living in tent camps nearly 18 months after the earthquake.

The ex-U.S. president then praised Building Back Better Communities as evidence that “if we do this housing properly, it will lead to whole new industries being started in Haiti, creating thousands and thousands of new jobs and permanent housing.”

Yet, so much about the expo was illustrative of what’s been done wrong thus far in Haiti’s reconstruction.

I first met Fauresmy just outside one of the first housing units Clinton visited—a small manufactured home being sold for $22,500 by a European conglomerate that had established a Haitian outfit called PMA. I had been trying to find out from the PMA sales reps about how well the unit’s particleboard walls would stand up in the event of a hurricane. Had they been tested for resistance to strong winds, for instance? “Well no, we don’t do that,” I was told by one of the reps, Karl Sante. “They don’t have to be tested,” he added.

When I asked about whether exhibitors were required to adhere to international building codes as a condition of participation, a Haitian employee of PMA helpfully telephoned Fauresmy.

A young Haitian engineer at the Ministry of Tourism, Fauresmy agreed to show me around the expo. As we toured the various units, he confided to me that in his opinion a full half of the housing models on display would not withstand earthquakes and hurricanes. Walking around the expo site, the tall, soft-spoken government engineer pointed out specific units that he believed would likely either be torn from their foundations, or have their roof torn off, or their walls blown down, in hurricanes.