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Where does Haiti stand three years after its 7.0 earthquake?

After billions of dollars in aid spent to help Haiti 'build back better' from its devastating earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010, hundreds of thousands are still without homes.

2. Where did the people go?

Dieu Nalio Chery/AP
A group of boys sit on the rooftop of a home damaged by the 2010 earthquake, across from the Jean Marie Vincent camp where they now reside, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2013. There are 347,284 Haitians still living in 450 camps today.

  • By Ezra Fieser Correspondent

The estimated 1.5 million Haitians displaced by the earthquake descended upon any patch of green they could find to set up tarp-covered structures and tents. They surely thought the flimsy structures would be temporary. Yet, 347,284 Haitians still live in 450 camps today.

Those who moved out did so with the help of government, UN, and international NGO subsidies to pay rent for a year, or they moved in with family members. Still tens of thousands of others traded their shacks for equally precarious shelter in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. 

“One of the biggest questions is what happened to these 1.2 million people that moved out of camps. Where did they go?” asks Jake Johnston, international research associate for the liberal, Washington-based Center for Economic Policy Research.

To house the former camp dwellers, aid agencies have built 5,911 permanent houses and repaired another 18,725 homes that were damaged in the earthquake. The larger focus has been on constructing 110,964 temporary shelters, simple plywood structures meant to last no longer than a few years. 

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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