by Haiti Grassroots Watch
Zoranje, HAITI, Sep. 24
– The smells
and scenes that greet a visitor to this eerily empty collection
of over 60 brightly painted homes and buildings verge on the
obscene. Some of the houses are filled with piles of desiccated
human excrement, their recently built living rooms and kitchens
turned into public latrines. A few appear occupied by squatters.
Paint is chipping. Doors have been torn from hinges. Toilets and
sinks ripped out.
One of the first Haitian
reconstruction projects to receive approval, funding and the
enthusiastic backing of former President Bill Clinton and his
foundation – over US $2 million from public and private sources
– today is called by many participants and even some organizers
“a farce,” “a disaster,” and “a waste of money.”
Fourteen months after Clinton
himself opened the “Housing Exposition” just outside the
capital, almost all of the model homes sit empty. Well over a
dozen have been severely vandalized.
Rather than being inhabited by
some of the 1.3 million people made homeless by the Jan. 12,
2010, earthquake, the “Expo” site is today overrun by scores of
goats, only too happy to find weeds sprouting throughout the
several hectares that were filled and landscaped at the cost of
US $1.2 million.
“All these houses had a
security guard,” a young woman sleepily told visitors recently
as she stood in the doorway of a little yellow house, built by
Colorado-based RCI Systems and priced at US $10,000. A
disheveled mattress lay on the floor behind her. “A lot of the
guards left because they hadn’t been paid.”
The Expo was one of the first
reconstruction projects approved by the Interim Haiti
Reconstruction Commission (IHRC), headed by Clinton and
then-Haitian Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive. The idea was to
“expose best practices for housing reconstruction by encouraging
innovative ideas” with an exposition and the construction of an
“Exemplar Community,” an IHRC document explains. The project
was also known as "Building Back Better Communities."
The Clinton Foundation gave US
$500,000; the Inter-American Bank gave another US $1.2 million;
the Deutschebank Foundation, the British government, and even
the Haitian government all contributed, according to officials
involved with the project. In addition, over 60 construction and
architectural firms spent thousands of dollars preparing plans,
importing materials, paying customs fees, attending conferences
and building their model homes, which now belong to the Haitian
government.
When Clinton and President
Michel Martelly visited the site in June 2011, the former US
president told journalists it was a “new beginning,” and when he
and Martelly returned on Jul. 21, 2011, for the inauguration,
Martelly said it “deserves our admiration.”
But that’s all Martelly said
before launching into an elegy about “Kay pa m” (“My
house”), a new mortgage program aimed at Haiti’s tiny middle
class. Since that date, the Expo has been ignored, as have the
architects, the construction firms, and the site, and the houses
themselves.
What happened to the project,
which some organizers claim was a success but which architects
who contributed the houses-turned-hovels roundly denounce as a
failure? Why are the houses still empty when over 300,000
earthquake victims remain homeless? Who is responsible?
Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW)
spoke to all of the major players and to many of the
participants* and discovered that, as one would-be builder put
it: “Haiti is a country of irresponsible people. Everyone got
paid, everyone worked, but no one’s responsible.”
Expo-nential Errors and Waste
The Expo was dreamed up a few months after
the earthquake during a meeting at Clinton’s home in Chappaqua,
NY, USA, according to architect Leslie Voltaire, one of its
originators. The government would hold a competition and forum
where local and foreign contractors could propose housing
solutions. At the end, the houses would be handed over to
homeless families, who would have to keep them clean so that
interested individuals, humanitarian agencies, or private
builders could visit at any time.
“It was a kind of win-win,”
said Voltaire in an exclusive interview with HGW. “The builder
makes a gift, but also has an example that can be seen by NGOs.”
Architect firm John McAslan and
Partners was brought in, and soon the plan expanded to include
the “Exemplar Community” – a village of 150 homes built with an
Expo model house to be chosen by a jury, with the appropriate
environmental, social and economic planning. The architecture
and planning schools at Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) came on board, the Deutschebank Foundation
committed $50,000 and on Aug. 17, 2010, the IHRC gave the green
light.
Leslie Voltaire spearheaded the
project; McAslan launched the competition, but then handed it to
another British company. (That firm – Malcolm Reading –
eventually pulled out, apparently because it wasn’t paid at all
or adequately. The firm declined repeated requests to be
interviewed.) Voltaire said he and McAslan chose the site – an
area called Zoranje on the border between Cité Soleil and Croix
des Bouquets. Voltaire knows it well. He designed the
government’s Village Renaissance housing project there in the
1990s.
The IDB offered to prepare the
site, which ended up costing $1.2 million because it required a
least a meter of gravel, according to IDB urban designer Arcindo
Santos.
“The zone is really low, so you
have to fill in, at least one meter. And each cubic meters costs
about, I think now its $25 US dollars,” Santos explained. None
of the estimated 10 million cubic meters of earthquake rubble
was used, the planner added, because of “earthquake material
wasn’t ready or available.” Instead, it took about 20,000
truckloads of gravel and fill dug from riverbeds and hillsides.
Voltaire decided to run for
president soon after the project got started, so it was handed
to the Tourism Ministry and its minister, Patrick Delatour. The
competition drew over 500 applications.
“In my opinion, the Expo was a
success because we completed our mission, meaning, we organized
a conference on housing and prototypes were constructed,” the
former minister told HGW.
Nick Rutherford of McAslan
agreed. “The competition ranked as among the most successful in
the world,” Rutherford said in a telephone interview, because
the contest generated what he called “affordable and sustainable
houses.”
But the 60 or so models
eventually chosen have an average price tag of US$21,000 and
range up to US $69,000, steep prices for humanitarian
organizations, and in a country where more than two-thirds the
population makes less than US$2 a day. And many of houses are
made with imported materials.
Still, Rutherford said, “from
our point of view… it’s been a huge success.”
“Success” or not, the
exposition did not take place in November 2010 as planned,
reportedly due to elections. Instead, the government decided to
hold a housing conference in January 2011, and planned
the Expo for later in the year.
“That was a kind of lollipop
they gave contractors to keep them interested,” Voltaire
admitted. “They were saying, ‘Nothing is happening!’ etc., so
[the government] did a conference.”
“It was the biggest joke I’ve
ever seen,” deplored John Sorge of Innovative Composites
International (ICI), one of the exhibitors. “It was a hoodwink
to promote the government… the whole Expo was a farce.”
Innovative spent “well into the
six figures” to participate in the Expo and conference, he said,
and its home has a price tag of $12,050, but the company, which
has offices in the US and Canada, had gotten no orders at the
time Sorge spoke with HGW. Today it appears workers in the area
are using ICI’s model as a gym. Shiny exercise machines fill one
room, and a hardhat can been seen hung on a handlebar.
“It was a horrible experience.
It was a lot of time, a lot of money,” and he said, the firm has
never heard anything from the government. “Silence.”
When the Expo finally did
launch on Jul. 21, 2011, Clinton and Martelly and other
organizers attended and journalists were bussed out to the site,
but few have visited after inauguration day. Even Voltaire
admits the organizers at the Tourism Ministry “lacked a certain
know-how concerning how to attract people.”
One home appears to have a
resident – an employee of Haitian firm Bureaucad S.A., one of
the exhibitors. The man, who asked not to be identified, said
his company had built the model – which is priced at US $12,500
– “because they thought the country was going to be
reconstructed. Since that hasn’t happened yet,” he has been
allowed to live there with his wife, son, and a servant.
“Exemplar Community” with no community
Soon after the Expo process was launched,
an “Exemplar Community” board of directors was formed, with
Voltaire, former Tourism Secretary and now Royal Caribbean
representative Maryse Pennette Kedar, industrialist Gregory
Mevs, and others. They were to work with Harvard, MIT, the IDB
and others to plan and build a model community.
Professors and students took
three consultation trips to Haiti that included a community
meeting and various surveys. The professors and others also held
a meeting on Martha’s Vineyard.
“We had a good retreat with the
MIT and Harvard groups to discuss new community creation in
Haiti. Somehow the location of Martha’s Vineyard was chosen,
President Obama’s preferred holiday spot, which provided a
glimpse at the tranquility and order that Haiti is missing,”
blogged Andy Meira, project director who was first on McAslan’s
and then the Clinton Foundation’s payroll.
The resulting 180-page
bilingual report – Designing Process – makes
recommendations related to choosing sites, employment programs,
agricultural production, energy use, and disaster preparedness.
It also has strong warnings for the Zoranje region, which is a
flood plain. By simply building it up with gravel, drainage
remains difficult and “nothing will grow.” Because of the
plain’s potential vulnerability to rain and eventual sea
flooding, report authors write, “the next catastrophe is
programmed.” The report ends with recommendations for an
“exemplar” development that could be built at Zoranje – if
various studies and precautions were taken – and replicated
across the country. But that community was never funded.
Instead, a different community
was funded and then built just down the road from the Expo
resembles all the other housing projects built in Haiti over the
past decade. Rows of small houses, with a little bit of green
space, inadequate drainage and – so far at least – no piped in
water system. The development – called “400 in 100” because its
reportedly 400 homes were supposed to be built in 100 days – was
funded by the IDB.
“At some point there was just
this incredible pressure to build houses,” Harvard School of
Design professor Christian Werthmann told HGW a bit wistfully.
“We submitted our report but it was never realized.”
On his website, former project
director Meira touts the Expo and Exemplar Community, calling
them the “most significant housing initiative in 2010.” but the
Mexico-based consultant refused to speak to HGW. The Clinton
Foundation also declined to comment, despite telephone calls and
a written request.
“Not even a thank-you”
Like Meira, a long list of organizers –
including the IDB’s Arcindo Santos, McAslan’s Nick Rutherford,
Harvard’s Werthmann, and former Minister Patrick Delatour – call
the Expo “significant,” “a good idea” and “a success.” And for
each of them, it was. Each person and agency accomplished his
piece of the project, attending conferences, writing reports,
inaugurating events. And most of them, and their employees, got
paid. But nobody carried the projects forward nor does anyone
seem to be bothered with them today. Rather than housing
earthquake victim families as the government promised, the model
homes are empty.
“We’re going to sell some and
rent some,” government housing reconstruction office Clement
Belizaire told HGW. “Some of them will have state services in
them. All of those houses will be used.”
Today, just one
is occupied by a state agency.
The model built by Haitian firm SECOSA now houses a police
station.
In
his interview with HGW, Voltaire admitted the Expo “a farce.”
While calling the Harvard/MIT study “excellent,” he pointed out
that perhaps the plan – his plan – was flawed from the
beginning.
“Who
was going to buy those houses?” he asked. “The Red Cross has
money to do housing. World Vision has money to do housing. USAID
has money to do housing. Maybe European Union, etc. They are the
ones who should have come to the Expo… but the ones who have the
money, where are they? They have their own housing [model] in
their heads already.”
Today, Voltaire noted, nobody seems to be in charge. Not the
state housing agency, not the housing reconstruction office, not
the Tourism Ministry.
“Clinton and Martelly are implicated in this thing,” he said.
“They inaugurated it. They are the ones who should take it in
hand. Martelly can’t just dump it like that. And Clinton can’t
just dump it like that. And they need to write to the firms who
put the prototypes there.”
But
Voltaire is implicated also, according to a Tourism Ministry
document. As of March 2011, he was put in charge of “the
management and follow-up of the Exemplar Community.”
HGW
did its own follow up, getting in touch with seven of the firms,
based in Haiti and the United States. Only one was building
houses, and it had obtained that contract before the Expo
started. All were dismayed with how the project turned out.
“It
was a waste of money with no respect for the builders,” Gabriel
Rosenberg of GR Construction said in a telephone interview.
“From what I can see, [Martelly’s] ‘Kay pa m’ took the
place of the project. We invested about US $25,000. We expected
to sell those houses.”
Jim
Dooley of New Hampshire, USA, said he got involved because he
“wanted to help” . He and his partners formed the “Ti Kaye”
(“Little House”) consortium and invested about US $68,000, he
told HGW.
“At
this point we have not sold one building,” Dooley said in an
email. “We invested a lot of time, a lot of energy, and a lot of
money. And at this point absolutely no one has communicated one
word. We would all feel better if we at least had some idea of
what was going on. We were told that the model would eventually
become a protective shelter and home for a caring and needy
family. We can only hope that is the future for this little
building. We certainly designed it and built it with that
foremost in mind.”
The
Ti Kaye is locked up tight, and empty.
Haitian entrepreneur Winifred Jean Galvan said she and her
Mexican partners at Pamacon S.A. spent US $27,000, part of that
on customs fees. “We didn’t even get a break at Customs. We paid
something like 30%,” she said, even though the $20,000 house was
a gift to the government.
Galvan and Pamacon got involved because they wanted to “to
provide people with a decent house” and “to make a living doing
that,” she said. Today the Pamacon model home sits empty. The
paint is peeling and one wall is cracked, but so far it hasn’t
been vandalized.
“They
took our money, they took our houses… with no respect for us,”
the 58-year-old businesswoman said. “We thought they would call,
at least to say if they chose our house or not [for the Exemplar
Community]. Not even a thank you. Not a goodbye. Nothing.”
* Note: Most
interviews for this article were conducted in early 2012.
Haiti Grassroots Watch
is a collaboration of Groupe Medialternatif/Alterpresse and the
Society for the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), along
with students from the Faculty of Human Sciences at the State
University of Haiti and members of women community radio
broadcasters network (REFRAKA) and the Association of Haitian
Community Media (AMEKA). |