Inspectors with the Ministry of Public Works have also tagged 120,000 homes with yellow paint, meaning the structures are damaged but repairable. International donors, including the U.S. government, have helped renovate just 6,000 homes in two years.
At the current pace, it will take another decade to bring the yellow houses up to minimal safety codes.
(Ramon Espinosa/AP) - A demonstrator waves a Haitian flag while walking between makeshift tents at the temporary camp in Champ de Mars, across the street from the collapsed National Palace, during a protest to demand new housing in Port-au-Prince in January.
“I cannot believe that we have lived here on the ground for two years,” said Williamson Aristide, who once worked at the airport handling cargo freight but has not had a real job since the earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010.
Asked about the prospects of finding a place to live, Aristide said: “There is not a word for it. It is very, very, very hard. There is nothing to rent.”
The ambitious plans of last year — with seaside promenades built of earthquake rubble and boulevards lined with three-story mixed-use commercial and residential developments — gather dust on government shelves, relics of a more naive era.
The “exemplar communities” of foam homes, geodesic domes and innovative Caribbean-style cabanas designed by world-class architects, promoted by the “Build Back Better” mantra of former president Bill Clinton and his Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, are on hold.
All the while, the camps are quickly deteriorating.
As of last month, there was no committed funding for emptying camp latrines, a risky gambit in a country facing a cholera epidemic. Almost all health services have been removed. U.N. peacekeepers are pulling back. The plastic tarps given to residents two years ago have a recommended life span of six months, and the temporary cities are in tatters.
“This is a dangerous place for a woman,” said Jasmine Charles, with a toddler on her hip. A man standing nearby said that the perimeter of the camp was relatively safe. “But go in deep? They will cut you and rob you, brother.”
More Keynes than Kumbaya
All camps in Haiti are heartbreaking, but the Champ de Mars is the most visible, a monument to endurance and despair, in a public space as prominent in Port-au-Prince as the Mall in Washington.
In the predawn hours of Dec. 6, hundreds of aid workers stole into the sprawling camp and dashed from shanty to shack, waking those inside and asking for the head of the household, to award them a plastic ID bracelet.
Aid officials knew from experience that the population of the camp would double overnight if word got out that the international community was coming bearing gifts.
Now the 5,000 households must decide what they will do. There are three options. The vast majority — probably 90 percent of the camp — are renters. They can accept a $500 rental subsidy and find a place to live. Based on surveys of local real estate, that is enough money to rent a small space for a year.
If the family can get a better deal than $500, they keep the change. The international aid workers do not want to involve themselves as real estate brokers, as that would only send rents spiraling upward.
The families will also get $25 to move their household goods, and they will receive an additional $125 if they remain for two months in the space they rent.
The new model for emptying a camp is more carrot, less stick, but more Keynes than Kumbaya.
The most vulnerable 10 percent — single mothers, the elderly and infirm, those suffering psychological trauma — will get additional services.
To the few families in Champ de Mars who own their homes, the program will give $1,500 to repair a yellow house and $3,500 to demolish a red one and erect a “T-shelter,” of tarp and plywood, a kind of shack 2.0.
For Champ de Mars, something is better than nothing, but expectations are high.
“The $500 is not enough,” said Jose Wildrick, a two-year resident of Champ de Mars. “It is not a good deal.”
Wildrick heard rumors that someone will build cement-block houses for the poor out in the dry cactus wastelands north of the capital. “We want one of those,” he said.
A darker reality
The second component is to revitalize the neighborhoods the camp residents might return to. The Canadian government is paying to reestablish 500 informal camp businesses, train 50 entrepreneurs, create 2,000 construction jobs for debris removal, and rebuild and repair damaged houses.
“If all we do is clear the Champ de Mars, we will have failed,” said Beverley J. Oda, minister of international cooperation for the government of Canada.
The successful emptying of Champ de Mars over the coming months would be a milestone for post-quake Haiti, a part of the promise that “Haiti is open for business,” and that the international community and nongovernmental organizations have not failed.
But the darker reality is this: The Haitian government is spending $30 million to empty six camps. There are 701 more. The Champ de Mars project will cost $20 million for 20,000 people. There would still be close to half a million displaced persons in camps. No country, no group of donor nations, no NGO is considering donating $500 million to Haiti to empty the camps.
The math does not work.
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