World Disasters Report 2010 - International Federation of Red Cross ...

CHAPTER 1
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further increases its price. This is why so much of the urban population in low- and
middle-income nations lives on land that is illegally occupied or illegally subdivided
(i.e., the land-use plan did not get official approval). High land prices also put pressure
on local municipalities to open high-risk areas for construction. The second challenge
is that housing is not only ‘the home’ but also the ‘access to income’ and ‘access to
services’, and for those with limited incomes, the house’s location in relation to where
its occupants work and children can go to school is as important, or more important,
than the quality of the house and the security of the tenure.
The pavement dwellers in Mumbai who construct tiny ‘houses’ on the pavement do so
because their incomes are so low that they cannot afford the cost of commuting from
the cheapest ‘proper housing’ they could afford. The problem is not unemployment as
most are employed. They are also not ‘recent migrants lacking knowledge of the city’
as some have sought to portray them – most pavement dwellers have been in the city
for many years. The problem is the gap between their incomes and the cost of housing
in locations with good access to employment. This is compounded by their lack of
access to credit and the lack of incremental housing options (housing that can be built
or extended over time) that are affordable. The same is true in Dharavi, the informal
city of some 600,000 inhabitants which originally formed on the outskirts of Mumbai
but which, as the city grew, became a valuable inner-city location. Housing conditions
in Dharavi are very poor but at the same time, it provides a very good location with
regard to income-earning opportunities and cheap accommodation.
This point has great relevance for any post-disaster reconstruction because most of
those whose homes are damaged or destroyed want to return to the same location due
to the access it provides both to income-earning opportunities and services, and to
their social networks with neighbours. To relocate those made homeless by a disaster
to ‘safe’ places far from where they have income-earning opportunities simply compounds
still further the disaster’s impact and most will not stay there. It also has great
relevance for any initiative to improve housing conditions because most households in
an informal settlement are far better served by in-situ upgrading than by moving them
to new housing in a new – almost always worse – location. In Haiti, as this report goes
to press, there is much discussion of decentralizing urban development so the highdensity
informal settlements in and around Port-au-Prince are not rebuilt. But such
a decentralization will only work if underpinned by a decentralization of livelihood
and income-earning opportunities – which is unlikely to happen. Households need a
choice: some may wish to leave owing to the risks and trauma to their families, while
others prefer to remain in, or return to, the areas where they had previously made their
homes. And it should not be only those with proof of land and housing ownership that
get help for rebuilding.
A final complication for disaster response is that the very poor quality of so much
housing prior to the disaster, including inadequate infrastructure and the fact that it