$500M in donations, six homes built
American Red Cross faces tough questions over Haiti quake relief
A scathing investigation published this week found that the American Red Cross, despite raising a half-billion dollars after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, built only six permanent homes on the island.
Yet, the Canadian Red Cross said Thursday it was able to help build 7,500 permanent homes in the ravaged Caribbean nation.
Representatives from both agencies refused to say how there could be such a huge, head-scratching discrepancy in outcomes.
According to a joint report by Pro Publica, an investigative nonprofit, and NPR, the American Red Cross bungled the management of $500 million in donations. In a statement, the American Red Cross accused the journalists of not being accurate or balanced, but it did not deny that only halfa-dozen homes had been built.
The relief agency claims to have provided housing to more than 130,000 people. It said people were provided homes mostly through rental subsidies and repairs to existing homes.
“The bottom line is that there hasn’t been sufficient land available to build new homes — particularly in the most heavily affected areas of Port-au-Prince where people want to live,” the statement said. “Haitians don’t want to leave the neighbourhoods where they lived, worked and went to school before the earthquake.”
The Canadian Red Cross, which collected $222 million in donations, said it was able to put $65 million toward the construction of 7,500 new homes.
Some of its press materials have previously referred to the structures as “shelters,” but spokesman Nathan Huculak said they are all considered “permanent homes.”
The agency concentrated its home-building efforts in the coastal communities of Jacmel and Leogane, 30 to 40 kilometres from the capital, Huculak said. It worked with architects and engineers to design the 18-square-metre homes so they could withstand earthquakes and hurricanes but also so they could be disassembled and moved easily, since many families do not own land.
They were built with wood frames and corrugated tin roofs using local construction teams trained by the Red Cross. While the homes are not equipped with plumbing, Huculak said they are similar to traditional Haitian homes in those areas.
Families were provided with paperwork to prove the homes belonged to them, as well as padlocks and tool kits to do repairs.
Asked how the Canadian agency was able to build so many homes when its U.S. counterpart was not, Huculak declined to speculate.
“Our approach has always been one to collaborate and work with local authorities … all the relevant players to work through challenges,” he said. “We’re very proud of the accomplishments achieved in Haiti.”
An American Red Cross spokeswoman declined to comment.
In its report, Pro Publica cited confidential memos, emails and interviews with a dozen insiders in painting a picture of a charity that had “broken promises, squandered donations, and made dubious claims of success.”
The charity’s initial plan, the report said, was to build 700 homes in the capital city with “finished floors, toilets, showers, even rainwater collection systems” that were to be completed in January 2013.
But the project never got off the ground.
Ali Asgary, a disaster management expert at York University, said homebuilding hasn’t traditionally been part of the Red Cross’s core mandate.
That said, it’s possible the Canadian Red Cross encountered fewer complexities than its American counterpart because it focused its building efforts outside the capital.
“Bureaucracy, corruption, complexities regarding ownership, even the permission to build, rebuild, can complicate the process,” he said.