1. Prefabricated
Shelters: Points
to Consider
Presentation at the
Sustainable Disaster
Relief Housing
Conference,
Oct. 28, 2011
Eddie Argenal
Shelter and Settlements
Advisor, USAID/OFDA

2. Session Agenda
• NOT Housing, but Shelter
• NOT just Shelter, but “S&S”
• NOT just “S&S,” but Links to
DRR and other Sectors
• Lesson from Haiti

3. OFDA: Lead USG Agency for Int‟l
Disaster Assistance Since 1964
1963, Irazu
Volcano in Costa
Rica
1963, Skopje EQ, Former Yugoslavia

4. USAID/OFDA Mandate
 Save Lives
 Reduce Suffering
 Reduce the Economic and
Social Impacts of Disasters
(OFDA’s “Third Phrase”)

5. OFDA Criteria for Response
 Host country must ask for, or be
willing to accept, USG assistance
 The disaster is of such magnitude
that it is beyond the host
country‟s ability to respond
adequately, and
 It is in the interest of the USG to
provide assistance.

6. Quick Review of OFDA Activities
• In FY ‟10 spent $1.3B
(5.8% of total USAID budget)
• 73 “declared disasters”
(1 every 5 days)
• Worked in 56 countries
• 250 employees in 25 offices
• FY‟08 = $550M
• FY‟12 = ???

7. Some of
OFDA‟s
Operational
Partners

8. A Challenging Work Environment:
The Fog of Relief
EU/
ECHO USAID
UN NGOs HOST
OCHA NGOs
NATION
NGOs SECURITY
FORCES
OTHER
WFP NGOs
ICRC USAID
DONORS
OTHER UN
AGENCIES IN
COUNTRY
UNHCR
US Military
Other Nation IOM
UNDP Military
UNJLC

9. Not an Atypical Pattern of
Recent OFDA Grant Funding to
OFDA Grant Funding 2003
Implementing Partners…
10%
25%
65%
UN Agencies NGOs/PVOs Int'l Orgs

10. OFDA Does NOT Engage in
Housing Reconstruction or
Development, But Rather
Humanitarian Shelter Assistance

11. “Full Reconstruction” Exceeds
“HA” Mandates and Capacities

12. “Full Reconstruction” in Response
Phase May Appear to Close Gap, But
Few “HA” Actors Know How to do it,
so… MORE PROBLEMS

13. Transitional Shelter
• More than a tent, less than a house
• Jump-starts and re-engages affected
populations in the incremental, longer-
term process of housing development
• Means of Promoting DRR and
Livelihoods (platform for other sector interventions), and
• Unlike other sectors, no easy handoff to
development. With programmatic
vacuum, all the more reason to
emphasize CONTEXT and TRANSITION.

14. Transitional
Shelter,
Indonesia

15. Back to the Big Picture:
SETTLEMENTS, the
“Where?” of “Our” Mandate

16. Where Settlements are located,
How they have developed,
How rapidly they grow,
How strong their economies are, and
How well they are managed, esp. in
times of crisis…
Will largely determine
whether they become
the sites of future
disasters -- and
possible USG responses

17. The TRENDS Affecting Settlements
Are Many, and Include…
• The Future Is Urban. Global population will increase from
6.2 billion to 8.3 billion, ’03-’30; equiv. of nearly 100% located
in the cities of developing countries, increasing pop. from 2 to 4
billion!
• Persistent Poverty. Over 3.3 billion people -- 48% of
humanity -- survived on per capita incomes of no more than
$2.50/day in 2005. The poverty level was 2.5 billion in 1987.
• Increasing Strains on Basic Social Services and Institutions
• Growing Environmental Decline, Coupled with Limited
Economic Growth
• HIV/AIDS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Pandemic
Influenza, etc. increasingly a feature of settlements

18. ANYONE SEEN…
• Conditions depicted are experienced
by nearly 1 of every 6 human beings
• By 2030, nearly 1 of every 4!!!

19. Implications for OUR
Work…
• Context: 2X urban pop., 3X urban
land; LOTS of issues with growth
• Chronic and acute needs are
merging more and more every day
• Disasters/crises accelerate and
exacerbate the urbanization
process, and
• How to address urban
displacement?

20. Example: Kabul, „00-‟10:
3X Pop., Maybe 6X Area

21. The Importance of
Settlements
• Settlements provide context for
shelter interventions
• Unit of Analysis changes with a
settlements approach; no longer a
near-exclusive focus on households
and shelter, but neighborhoods and
larger communities, and
• Change in Unit of Analysis
particularly useful in urban areas.

22. One Solution Does NOT Fit
All
• Return to safe shelter
• Return to safe, cleared sites
• Stay with host family
• Stay in proximity site with
host community, and
• Relocate to planned sites

23. The Basic of a Settlements
Intervention
• Shelter-led
• Multi-sectoral, reflecting multi-faceted
character of context (i.e., settlements)
• Opportunistic with regard to livelihood
promotion and “DRR” (e.g., rubble removal)
• Cognizant of gender, environment,
local organizations, and social relations
• Transitional, by linking relief and
developmental concerns, and
• Accountable to local governing
structures

24. CONTEXT, CONTEXT, CONTEXT
 Poorest country in the hemisphere, about
149th of 182 countries listed in the UN's
Human Development Index, just below PNG
 80% unemployed or underemployed
 60% below the poverty line, making less than
$2/day per capita
 In PAP, 70% of population doesn‟t officially
exist (rent, lease, squat, but don’t own land)
 In PAP slums, 11 sq. m. for 6 people
 Limited institutional capacities, and
 High vulnerability to flooding, landslides,
hurricanes, and, yes, earthquakes.

26. USAID/OFDA Shelter Outputs
 Emergency Phase:
-- Plastic sheeting distributed to estimated
500,000-600,000 people
 Transitional Phase:
-- Hosting Support to est. 17,500 HHs
(HA community doesn‟t track totals, but OFDA share thought to be notable)
-- House Repairs for 7,181 Families (Approx. 80% of
HA community output, via 5,081 repairs)
-- Transitional Shelter for 28,326 HHs (as of 10-1-
11. Also, approx 33% of HA community output)
-- Completed approx. 112% of 47,500
identified “shelter solutions” (as of 10-1-11)

27. Habitability Assessment and
Yellow-Tag House Repairs
• USAID/OFDA supported UN Habitat and
PADF/Miyamoto to conduct/manage
assessment of 403,176 structures
• USAID/OFDA supported PADF/M and
WCDO to repair 3,908 houses as of 3-9-
11, approx. 80-90% of humanitarian
community (HC) output; will repair
approx. 2,000 more houses, and
• 94,002 yellow-tag houses, but current
HC plans only call for repairs to fewer
than 10,000 structures.

28. “CCC”:
UNDAMAGED
Rural House,
Mirebalais
Area

29. UNDAMAGED Rural House,
Leogane Area

30. CHF Transitional Shelter
for Leogane and West

31. ADRA “TS”
Project,
Carrefour

32. RE-Learned Lessons
Become “New” Guidance…
 Context, Context, Context!
 Tents Typically Not Large Enough
 Good Tents Expensive
 Complex logistics could make deployed
“Pre-fabs” More Expensive
 Schools = Poor Shelter
 Local Options are Familiar, Available,
Often Inexpensive, thus Accepted.

33. RE-LEARNED
LESSON:
THINK BIG, OR
YOU‟LL MISS THE
“BIG PICTURE”

34. How Much
Rubble in Haiti?

35. 1,000 Truckloads a Day for
1,000 Days – Minimum!

36. EMERGENT LESSON
• Few want to deal with rubble, and it‟s
expensive to address, so it could take
years to remove/dispose
• Yet rubble is ALSO the most effective
land use management tool most
countries will ever have: where you
don‟t clear, you don‟t build, and
• Surgical, neighborhood-based focus
preferred over “clear cut” efforts; will
require creative “S&S” work, like land
sharing, land readjustment, and two-
story T-shelters.

37. EMERGENT LESSON:
THINK SMALL, OR YOU
WON‟T FIT (SPHERE) INTO
CITIES

38. 3.5 sq. m. per person is NOT
based on comfort, but is
considered “minimally
adequate” to
promote health,
privacy, and
human dignity
A = ± 3.5 m2/p

39. A First:
Two-Story
Transitional
Shelter, Haiti,
5-12-11
• Response to site
conditions and
need
• Platform for DRR
(structure, evac
routes, and WASH
opps)

40. RE-Learned Lessons
• Shelter is the Easy Part; the Much
Tougher Issue is LAND
• Shelter Delivery Made More Difficult
with Rubble. Affected Communities
Effectively Smaller in Area Because
Rubble is on top of Land, and
• In Haiti, PAP alone “lost” an
estimated 30% of land area, making
sheltering all the more difficult. (Ravine
Pintade 18 AC/7.3 HA, covered with 120k cubic m to height of 5‟/1.64 m)

41. RE-Learned Lesson:
Hosting (“STEALTH” Shelter)
Really Does Work
• Primarily socially defined, based on
family, friends, neighbors, etc.
• Commences before humanitarians
arrive on the scene, i.e., self-selected
• Cost-effective, flexible means of
sheltering
• Buys time for longer-term solutions to
emerge, and
• Often transitions to permanent shelter.

42. Host Family Support, Mirebalais
(New self-built shelter in family compound is on right)

43. RE-Learned Lesson:
Land Policies and Institutions
Are Often Dysfunctional, at Best
• In many countries, land management
(e.g., planning, measuring, recording,
documenting, regulating, taxing) is
ineffective, and
• Policy makers know steps “A and Z”, but
not steps B, C, D, etc. Problems are so
complex that they overwhelm existing
capacities.

44. THANK YOU FOR YOUR
TIME AND PATIENCE
EARGENAL@USAID.GOV