In developing countries, in absence of any fixed design standard, different NGOs often provide different types of houses to disaster-victims in a same community. Does this practice lead to developing a new inequalities in the society ? or lead to feeling disadvantaged in case of people who received low-cost houses/low-quality houses in compare to others who received better houses from NGOs
I know absolutely nothing regarding your excellent question! But I can offer a few observations from here in the UK. Here, the middle classes and the "upper" working class have long desired to own their own home. This has been encouraged by most governments since World War 2. They have sold off most of the social housing which people rented. Renting is now is now mostly run by the private sector.
Results: renters are widely regarded as failures or, worse, "scum." There's a great lack of housing generally. The private sector keeps raising rents which makes renters poorer. Too many landlords offer substandard housing.
You can't get a much more socially divisive issue here!
I suspect people who get lower standard housing my resent it a bit. But they'll know in advance which NGOs offer what. Just had luck really. Happy to have a roof, I'd have thought.
Christopher NOCK
Yes, you can see how this life and death stuff just puts the UK's problems in the shade! Although the ethnic conflicts there may well be a mirror image of class conflict here.
NOCK
This is a very important question, and one that we have observed directly on the Ecuadorian coast after the April 2016 earthquake. One year after the earthquake, the national government finished implementing many of its standard housing projects which essentially created new developments and communities, and standardized all housing dimensions and materials (in this case houses are a standard 45 square meters and principally cement-based).
These houses are considered permanent and residents may live there indefinitely, however, many individuals expressed discontent with the way houses were given out. In Ecuador, if you left the standard government-run shelter (which people lived in for almost 1 year after the Earthquake), you typically wouldn't receive a new house. There are also cases of people travelling from other provinces to live in the shelters and later receive a free house, despite the fact that they never lost a house in the first place and are not even from the region. Also, in a number of cases people would have to give up the title of their original property (destroyed from the earthquake) in order to receive a new house; the issue with this was that these people are in certain cases not receiving the titles to their new home, so there's little proof of ownership in many of the new housing developments.
With regard to NGOs, we've observed issues with the reconstruction process that you directly mentioned in your question. Despite the significant work that NGOs have done in Ecuador since the earthquake, many of the houses constructed are ones constructed within a 2-week period and typically last for a maximum of 10 years. They are supposed to be temporary fixes to the emergency, but from what we have observed the residents receiving these new houses do not know this. This could provoke issues in 10-12 years when some houses start deteriorating and residents begin demanding the local and national government help in some way.
This has been a serious issue in Resettlement Projects in India as well. The conflicts continue to affect and impact people.
Thank you all for sharing your experiences. Can you suggest some published documents or reports where I can find more of the issues you have mentioned here?
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