It is estimated that in excess of 250,000 people were killed in the January 2010 Haiti earthquake, hundreds of thousands more were injured, and approximately 1.3 million people were left homeless. This is attributed to the failure of a majority of the building stock, primarily homes, whose losses totaled an estimated $3 billion.

 

As it is projected that 600,000 homes will need to be reconstructed to meet the needs of this devastated nation, there is growing consensus that the recovery in the residential sector will only be accomplished by building local capacity to finance and execute the reconstruction of resilient homes. Unfortunately, the constraints and obstacles Haiti presents are significant.

 

As a result, four years have passed since the earthquake and families still have no viable roadmap to do so, as their traditional masonry construction has proven too expensive to safely re-implement, leaving them indefinitely confined to their transitory shelters.