What happens when huge numbers of people lose their homes? Hundreds of thousands of Haitians lost their homes in the giant earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince in January. Six months later, resource-poor and with little help from their government, they remain homeless. When there are that many displaced people, where do they live? Apparently, everywhere. This week NPR reported that about 1,000 people are living in 326 make-shift structures on an 8-foot-wide median dividing one of Haiti’s busiest roads.
If private property is off-limits, public space fills up, and temporary housing isn’t provided, where are people to go?
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 7
AR — June 6, 2010
What help could the government give? This isn't like America or other industrial nations, where a large and wealthy productive class can support the poor's basic requirements with relatively small amounts of taxation; almost everyone in Haiti is poor, so there's almost nothing for the government to tax.
And in any case, it is not at all obvious that the displacement shown is much worse than how these Haitians where living before the earthquake.
Ed — June 6, 2010
We might remember the post from a little while ago, where the largest plurality of Americans (I don't think quite a majority) thought that slashing the foreign aid budget is the best way to deal with deficits. And of course there are big problems in the US to address, like crushing and persistent poverty and a small matter in the Gulf. But I think things, admittedly already bad, were made worse in Haiti by the earthquake. If we think we should help, we are facing an up hill battle, made worse by a "It's always been that way" attitude. Maybe so, but the way to guarantee nothing changes is to do nothing.
Alyssa — June 6, 2010
This reminds me of something I saw in the film "War Photographer," about documentary photographer James Nachtwey. At one point Nachtwey goes to Indonesia to photograph people living on a 6 foot wide stretch of gravel in between two busy railroad tracks, because it is the only public land available on which the poorest segment of the population can live. The father in the family he befriends got run over by one of the trains and lost an arm and a leg, yet still must walk around the city panhandling from cars so he can have enough money to feed his kids.
ducky — June 8, 2010
My Question is where did the money in relief ad go it was in the order of 644 million dollars! Reportedly only 30% percent of it has been used? If the Haitian government used that money for apartments and buildings and communities with wells and sewers etc etc. They could weather proof the island from the next natural disaster. so what is the hold up?