All relief agencies working in support of Haiti have experienced daunting logistical challenges, including the very complex issue of land clearance. World Shelters’ shipment for Doctors without Borders is currently in Haiti awaiting site clearance. The shipment for ACTS World Relief is currently in Florida awaiting transport to Haiti. For more information on the difficulties of land clearance and logistics within Haiti, please see this Associated Press article.

Due to these issues, the World Shelters team has not yet departed for Haiti. As soon as our partner agencies have resolved the issues of land clearance for these installations, we will send our team to erect these structures. The rainy season typically begins on April 1 and we want to provide these facilities as soon as possible. We are working closely with our partnering agencies in order to obtain the necessary land clearance and complete these projects for medical installations as expeditiously as possible.

World Shelters has submitted proposals for over 20,000 family shelters in response to multiple agencies’ requests for proposals. Currently little to no land in Haiti is available for siting any of these projects.

As new developments arise, we will be updating the World Shelters website with this new information.

As of April 1st, donation options include:

World Shelters’ Donation Code is 88-80042. Thank you for your generous support!

The competition honors Buckminster Fuller’s life intention “to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone.” (BFI)

“World Shelters is honored to have reached this stage of competition,” World Shelters Executive Director Bruce LeBel said. “We have developed an economically sustainable, jurisdictionally conforming and technically unique design for emergency and transitional shelter that we propose to demonstrate in accordance with California’s Senate Bill 2 which establishes civil rights, zoning and development standards. Our proposal and capabilities offer an achievable option for jurisdictions to approach the issue of persons unsheltered.”

The winner will be honored in Washington, D.C. in June.

To see World Shelters’ entry, please go to:
http://worldshelters.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/bfi-challenge-entry-ws-200910-web.pdf

Buckminster Fuller Institute Press Feb. 17, 2010 Press Release
“The 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Semi-Finalists Announced” available at:
http://bfi-internal.org/pdfs/2010_PressRelease_Challenge_SemiFinalists.pdf

The WS team will also be taking materials to demonstrate design options for emergency (6-months) and transitional (3-5 years) family shelters adapted to the context in Haiti and to meet parameters defined by the Emergency Shelter Cluster and the government of Haiti. World Shelters has received requests to partner with several agencies towards substantial shelter projects that may utilize these designs. World Shelters and our extensive network of volunteers is prepared to begin work on family shelter projects in Haiti as soon as the funding agency confirms shelter project scope. The most significant current constraint is the land for these new transitional settlements, some of which will undoubtedly become permanent.

The generosity of World Shelters’ donors and Ashland, OR-based Pacific Domes has allowed World Shelters to contribute two “U-Dome” shelters and two Pacific Domes 44’ diameter shelters, with a combined value of over $70,000.

These shelters will provide over 3,500 square feet of shelter for medical procedures and patient recovery at the SDA Hospital in Port au Prince. This is the same facility where Eureka orthopedic surgeons Asa Stockton and Nathan Shishido joined a team of nine other medical professionals from California, treating hundreds of patients and utilizing thousands of dollars of supplies donated by Humboldt County residents.

A two-person team from World Shelters (Haiti Program Manager Jason Hervin and Project Engineer Armand Mulin) will deploy to Haiti shortly in order to supervise the construction of these shelters, utilizing local labor when possible in an effort to facilitate local economic recovery as well as provide shelter to those in need. They will assess the shelter needs of multiple agencies that have contacted World Shelters for assistance, and will also continue World Shelters’ close work with the Emergency Shelter Cluster towards large-scale shelter projects.

“World Shelters projects build relationships with local communities,” Haiti Program Manager Jason Hervin said. “We provide not just shelters, but also opportunities for local Haitians to earn income while rebuilding their communities.”

Though it has been less than one day since the earthquake as we write this, World Shelters and our collaborating partners are actively developing our projects and evaluating needs based on assessments from the field. Your support of World Shelters’ Haitian relief efforts will provide a maximum value in context-appropriate shelter that will help make the transition towards permanent housing “built back better”.

Transitional Materials Are Key to Success

Shelter materials brought into Haiti need to be transitional in nature: they should provide immediate relief utility, but must also be useful towards construction of permanent housing. Tents, for example, have little or no transitional value, whereas frames made of locally available materials that can be covered with relief sheeting, and later with corrugated roofing panels, will have both immediate and transitional uses.

Reconstruction = Economic Recovery

The need to rebuild Haiti represents an opportunity to create paid work for Haitians and to grow the local economy. The positive impact for local workers is very significant and must be maximized, beginning with the relief process. Rebuilding starts now.
Outside cash spent in Haiti will circulate from five to eight times in the local economy, providing significant and desperately needed fuel and spark for the local economic engine. If that cash is instead spent outside of Haiti on well-intentioned but short-use deliverables such as tents, rather than being paid out for local labor, local materials and local construction activity, that shelter donation’s economy-building potential is wasted.
Certainly there are significant amounts of materials that need to be brought into Haiti for relief, rebuilding and recovery. While the news media focus on relief, the greater value for shelter-related materials and finances provided to Haiti will be derived from resources for rebuilding and recovery.
The average Haitian family is multi-generational with only one of five employed and an average family annual income of under $700 per year.. If offered either a tent and some other compact non-food items, or the tent’s delivered cost of $1,400 (US) cash, which do you think would have the most value to this family? Tents are temporary. Delivery of foreign bought and made “solutions” for disaster relief creates a cycle of dependency and minimizes the local economic development value of these financial resources. What Haitians need from outside are shelter materials they can use to build transitional and permanent housing, and to complete other construction. The financial resources for relief, rebuilding and recovery should be spent within Haiti to the greatest extent possible, to the direct benefit of Haitians while equipping them to make their own decisions and efforts towards recovery.

Conforming to Disaster Relief Standards

It is imperative that materials and supplies brought into Haiti conform to minimum standards for disaster relief, as defined by the Sphere international consortium and adopted by relief agencies worldwide. For shelters, a minimum of 3.5 square meters per person is mandatory. For a family of five, shelter must be a minimum of 18 square meters. The inaccurate claims by some that small tents provide shelter for ten people should cease as these statements are inappropriate, not humanitarian, and contrary to the mission and goals of established relief agencies.

What is World Shelters Doing?

World Shelters is working to provide transitional shelter frame kits of 18 m2 for $99 apiece (the JAS Shelter). These traditional-shape truss-roof shelters are sized to utilize the 4×6 meter relief sheeting as the initial roof covering, as these sheets are now coming to Haiti in large volumes from the UN, the International Red Cross, the USAID Office of Disaster Assistance, and other relief agencies. The JAS Shelter frames can then be roofed with the corrugated galvanized roofing sheets that will be the most common construction material following the disaster. These transitional shelters can then be built on or integrated into other structures and readily adapted to local architectural details and with various local construction materials “built back better”.
As there is an enormous amount of rubble and a need for rapid rebuilding of walls, we are also working to provide wire frame gabions to convert rubble into reinforced walls. We are also assisting in provision of larger sized tensile structures for necessary temporary and permanent uses such as field hospitals, clinics, schools, municipal centers, and other common purposes.

For the longer term, the TranShel transitional shelter will also be evaluated for its appropriateness in the Haiti context. The frameless hard-panel TranShel is designed to the standards of the international Transitional Shelter Consortium as a low cost complete shelter that is readily adaptable into permanent structures.

Please contact World Shelters (www.worldshelters.org) for effective shelter relief, recovery and rebuilding in Haiti.
We request your support for World Shelters’ initiatives towards relief, rebuilding and recovery in Haiti.

How Can I Help?

Please go to WorldShelters.org and click on the “Donate Now” button to make your generous contribution. With your help, the recovery in Haiti starts now.

Schneider discussed the Ventura County Star’s report from earlier this year that addressed the 12 percent increase in Ventura County’s unsheltered population within the last two years. From Jan. 27-30, volunteers joined Ventura County Homeless and Housing and Urban Initiatives staff to count 2,193 persons unsheltered in Ventura County on any given day. To look for people, they searched in “river bottoms, parks, libraries, parking lots and recycling centers as well as agencies where homeless go for food and shelter”. However, such counts are very difficult to conduct accurately and federal estimates place the number around 8,000 persons unsheltered in Ventura County.

Schneider credits World Shelters and other architects and designers working on “inventive solutions” to this problem.

World Shelters was also profiled this week on the Stone Soup blog (see October 12 entry). The entry begins with a quote highlighting the humanitarian mission of World Shelters: “With the shelter cost of under $2 per person per day, there is now inherent affordability and dignity by the homeless themselves paying for shelter and showers.” To read more, just follow the Stone Soup link above.

Here are some images of our hard-working volunteers in action. Many thanks to everyone who came out to help!