Rebuilding after disasters - Rebuilding After Disasters: From Emergency to Sustainability - page 10

construction, many governments and NGOs become involved in the mass
provision of temporary housing units, arguing that they can be installed
on public land, urban public space or beside debris and affected buildings.
However, Chapter 4 shows that, in reality, the effectiveness of temporary
housing programs is challenged by two main realities particular to develop-
ing countries: (i) the mass-produced units (often largely prefabricated and
industrialized) are disproportionably expensive compared to permanent
housing solutions built with traditional materials; and (ii) in contexts of
constant demand for affordable housing, temporary units tend to remain
longer than expected and sometimes they even become permanent. These
obstacles have been largely reported by Johnson, et al. in the reconstruction
process of Turkey in 2001 and of Colombia in 1999 14 and have also occurred
in many other locations, as reported by UNDRO. 35 During the seventies and
eighties, this form of housing was often delivered by special contractors that
sponsored innovative shelter solutions produced with high-tech industrial-
ized methods. These shelters usually implied standardization and resulted
in repetition of a “universal” unit that rarely responded to the specifics of
climate, topography, local customs and local forms of living.
Most recent practices include the construction of shack-type temporary
units made of timber and and/or corrugated iron sheets. Usually located
in public or vacant land and built with perishable materials, this form of
housing has primitive infrastructure and is made by organizations that are
not permanent (regular) housing builders. Even worse, the providers of
this form of housing rarely anticipate and plan for a natural transition to
permanent housing. In the case of temporary housing built in the city of
Armenia, Colombia, after the earthquake of 1999, large amounts of timber
and corrugated sheets that were used to build the 6000-unit temporary camps
was neither transferred to users nor used in any useful manner. Instead, it
was stored, lost or trashed. In a remarkable example of lack of coordination
between organizations and of political absurdities, a public university that
was responsible for managing the publicly funded temporary camps found
that a national law bans the delivery of goods that belong to the state to in-
dividual citizens without a special permission from Congress. Unfortunately,
this included used wood, nails and corrugated iron sheets, even after they
were no longer needed for temporary housing. 14
Permanent housing is usually the last step, and this step is often conducted
by regular organizations of the building industry (contractors, planners, etc.)
that are often constrained by two preconditions: centralized provision and
the use of a single technology. This responds to the fact that, after bidding
processes where multiple companies compete for the contract, contractors
and governments alike believe that they have found the “optimum” solution,
which needs to be widely exploited and optimized. Furthermore, affordable
housing produces slim profits per unit, and thus it is often considered that
gains can only be obtained from economies of scale, where standardization
and repetition are prioritized. 20