Operational Framework and Strengths and Weakness of the Homeowner Driven Housing Reconstruction Strategy
A dwelling is more than the four walls and the materials used or the time and money spent on it. It is the home and a theatre of our lives, where the major drama of birth and death, of procreation and recreation and enacted. It is symbol of identity and it signifies our culture and value systems. We build our homes over time and we own them, what go into them and what is not.
Natural disasters such as earthquake, flood, cyclone and tsunami and manmade disasters such as civil conflicts continue to affect millions of people all over the world. Most of the victims of these disasters are the poor people because their habitats are often located in vulnerable areas prone to natural disasters and they live in overcrowded houses. International disaster reconstruction experience suggests that sustainable housing reconstruction efforts require a multi-pronged strategy: Houses are build back better using local materials and knowledge, housing reconstruction process is managed within an owner and community participation framework, and housing reconstruction mitigation costs are transferred to a large number of stakeholders through a long term housing insurance policy.
The government assistance policies in the wake of reconstruction program often go through lively debates between the government, international organizations, non-government organizations and civil society organizations. One set of argument is based on what is generally called as the ‘compensation policy’, meaning an ‘insurance approach’ for compensating the people in proportion to the loss they have incurred.
A second argument is based on the ‘getting people back to their homes’ approach, which would ensure the minimum housing assistance required to build the core housing unit. Application of the second approach is structured either on the basis of the ‘relative economic capacity of the people to help themselves’, meaning a differential payment structure based on the type/value of the houses damaged, or an unified financial assistance per housing irrespective of the house value. Application of these models are often influenced by the extent of the damage, community vulnerability, the level and nature of the resources mobilized by the partners, and the financial assistance framework of the government and development partners.
Most of the multilateral development institutions justify grant/soft credit financing of a ‘private good’ such as housing investment only in emergency conditions. While the scope of reconstruction of public goods and services lost during the disaster is often widened depending upon the scale and depth of disaster and related vulnerability, the scope of reconstruction of private good such as housing is limited to getting people back to their homes. Often the scope of this development aid is limited to provide the minimum shelter with the essential basic services to the disaster-affected communities. Even though, there is no international standards available to determine the minimum area provided as part of the housing reconstruction assistance package, it is basically a function of the amount of funds mobilized by the Government, including grant and soft loans, as well as the funds mobilized through NGO and INGO communities. As a result the minimum space of the reconstructed house vary from 20 SQMT to 45 SQMT for an average family.
Broadly, housing reconstruction strategies have used a combination of approaches to rebuild the damaged houses: contractor built housing; government public housing and owner driven housing reconstruction practices. The homeowner driven approach focuses on enabling the disaster affected communities to undertake the rebuilding processes by themselves, with financial and technical assistance from government and development partner and civil society organizations. Even though, a large part of the housing reconstruction efforts were based on contractor built model in most of the reconstruction efforts in Turkey, Iran, Peru, Mexico, Latur, large scale application of the owner driven approach came into effect with the successful implementation of the approach in Gujarat (India) after the 2001 earthquake in which nearly 888,000 housing units were supported for reconstruction.
A common misconception is to associate owner driven housing reconstruction synonymous to ‘in-situ’ reconstruction process and to associate a relocation housing directly with a contractor built housing process. In practice, in-situ construction could be done either through a contractor built model or an owner driven housing model. However, since the level of owner participation will be much higher in the case of ‘in-situ’ as compared to a relocation project, the owner driven housing approach could take a variety of operational forms. Since A review of the various approaches applied in the Owner driven housing reconstruction strategy suggests the following variants:
Self Help Approach: This is the classical owner driven approach in which houses are reconstructed using the cash grant and technical assistance provided by the government/partner agencies supplemented by the owner contribution in cash and kind. A basic premise of this approach is that labor and building materials are easily available locally, housing design is simple, local communities have a tradition of building houses by themselves, and there is no strict and unreasonable time constraints for completing the construction works.
Supplementary Financing Approach: The supplementary approach entails the government assistance package is supplemented by a ‘top up’ or co-funding program by the non-government organizations or development partners. The supplementary assistance could take either cash assistance, technical assistance or material support forms. In this approach, the NGO/Co-funding agency shall enter in to a formal memorandum of understanding with the government and assist the beneficiaries identified by the program implementation agency. Conceptually, the top up package is aimed to support the most vulnerable families who do not have the wherewithal to provide the ‘owner contribution’ in cash and kind. This approach is also recognized as a mitigation measure for inflationary pressures.
An important operational constraint experienced in this model relates to the weak sequencing of the funding stream provided under the government cash grant policy and the fund disbursement policy of the co-funding agencies. Operational difficulties to adopt a common set of technical guidelines and streamlining the construction certification and payment schedules constraint the smooth operation of the cash grant linked co-funding. However, material supply linked co-funding strategy work more efficiently.
Owner-NGO Partnership Approach: In this variant, the NGO acts as a building facilitator and provide all technical supports to the homeowners to build the houses by themselves. Since contractors are not used for building houses, the technical staffs of the NGOs act as the designers and construction supervisors. In this approach the NGO acts as the personal designer of the owner and also train the local masons and impart the building know how to the beneficiaries.
Two conditions are required to efficiently implement this partnership approach. First, the NGO should be familiar with the cultural and social preferences and should have a good rapport with local communities. Community level rapport is required since the efficient utilization of the technical staff and resource mobilization required under this approach require construction of large number of ‘in situ’ housing units within the same village. Second, the NGO should have the technical capacity to build houses based on local materials and skill sets and also it should have the capacity to enhance the technical capacity of the local community to ensure long term sustainability of the program.
In brief, the operating plan to implement an efficient and sustainable owner driven housing reconstruction program would entail the following processes:
Inclusive and Equitable Strategy: The reconstruction program should be inclusive of all affected families, and the financial assistance package should be in proportion to the level of housing damage incurred during the disaster and the relative economic cost of reconstruction. This means that partly damaged house and fully damaged housing units should be paid differentially. Also fully damaged adobe housing units and units based on concrete structure and permanent roofs should be paid differently due to the variations in their economic costs.
Damage Assessment: Since housing needs assessment in the post disaster reconstruction program is necessarily linked to reconstruction of damage units, it is important to technically assess the damage with community participation. A transparent technical assessment of the levels of damages should form the base of program targeting process. It is also advisable to engage the local community, NGO or civil society organizations in the damage assessment process to ensure social validation of the process.
Community Validation of Eligibility: Eligibility determination of beneficiaries in terms of the levels of damage and economic cost of reconstruction could be implemented effectively if the local communities are involved in these processes. Social mobilization, dissemination of information and education are some of the essential requirements to effectuate satisfactory levels of community participation. Continuous facilitating supports from the government agencies to provide duplicate documents of property ownerships and residency proofs are some of the most common problems experienced in eligibility determination.
Prioritization of Beneficiaries: Depending upon the scale of the disaster and the level of resources mobilized by the government and financing agencies, the program may determine the program targeting and beneficiary prioritization. While the level of vulnerability and the socio economic capital available to the beneficiaries could be some of the indicators for prioritizing beneficiaries, the process should be engineered through community consultation process so that the families not assisted should not perceive as ‘excluded’.
Progress Linked Fund Disbursement Process: Since economic deprivation and loss of livelihoods could challenge the efficient utilization of the housing cash grant for the house construction purposes, a physical progress linked payment process is commonly recommended for disbursing the cash assistance. To ward off the misuse of cash grant many NGO provide the additional assistance in kind rather than in cash. Implementation of a transparent and effective physical progress certification and financial disbursement arrangement will minimize the ‘speed money’ problem commonly observed in these arrangements.
Grievance Redressal Mechanism: One of the important elements of a successful operating strategy to implement owner driven housing reconstruction strategy is the establishment of an equitable and transparent grievance redressal mechanism. It is recommended to establish ombudsman/grievance cell at program implementation and program management levels.
Communication Strategy: All parties should agree on an information dissemination policy to ensure transparency and accountability in project implementation. As a first step, the implementing agency should publicize details of beneficiary entitlements, eligibility, and funding and disbursement procedures. It is also important to launch an effective communication and media relation strategy to ensure transparency in the program operations.
Quality Assurances: Technical quality assurances and implementation of the program consistent with the operational guidelines are some of the serious challenges facing the owner driven housing reconstruction approach. Third party technical auditing, eligibility determination and financial auditing supplemented with continuous social and environmental assessments provide the much required tools to mid course correction. The effectiveness of these audits are achieved only if they are implemented as mid course correction tools, rather than providing the overall quality assessment after the completion of the project.
The main strengths of the owner driven approach are: the beneficiary participation and ownership of the construction processes by constructing their houses based on their preferences and requirements as well as contributing their sweat equity, the construction costs are generally tend to be lower, a higher level of occupancy is achieved and disaster affected families get back to their homes much earlier than the contractor built housing process.
Further, the approach encourages the beneficiaries to build their houses incrementally to improve the housing environments at their capacity and choices; thereby encouraging the beneficiaries to convert their houses into homes with personal touch and incremental improvements.
Some of the intangible benefits are: the process encourages great deal of community participation and cohesion. Besides, through its therapeutic effects, the owner driven reconstruction process help to restore a sense of dignity among the devastated community and help them to look forward to a better future. The house construction process can engage a large number of community members in productive employment. The approach also optimally utilizes local resources and supports the revival of the local economy.
With adequate financial and technical assistance, self-built houses could achieve higher level of sustainability and the process also strengthens the local knowledge base to construct houses. Another important indirect benefit is that the owner driven process preserves the local cultural heritage and vernacular housing styles and built forms, which are essential for the preservation of the cultural identity of communities.
As against the large number of benefits, the approach also entails a few weaknesses and risks. Availability of local materials and labor and unviable restriction of timeline for completing the houses are some of the preconditions for the successful implementation of this approach. Besides, the approach marginalizes the most vulnerable families, widowed families; families with disabled members and economically most vulnerable families who could not afford to contribute their own labor due to livelihood issues. Successful inclusion of these communities would require an effective implementation of NGO-Beneficiary partnership model. Further, people may be too busy with livelihood issues after the rescue and relief stage and thus may be incapable to initiate the house construction process immediately after the relief stage.
Time is the essence of this approach. Application of unreasonable timeline for completing the construction works would jeopardize the effectiveness of the owner driven housing reconstruction approach, which is aimed to encourage the beneficiaries built their houses as per their requirements and capacities on an incremental format. This is often a difficult operational issue experienced by the funding agencies financing the homeowner driven housing reconstruction program. Since emergency reconstruction assistance program is generally structured over short to medium terms, reconstruction program implementation and financial disbursement schedules are also designed over short to medium timeframes. This would ‘push’ the beneficiaries to start and complete the housing construction works within a ‘reasonable construction cycle’. The physical progress linked financial disbursement arrangements streamline the financial assistance payment process. The institutional capacity of the government and partner organizations to provide the supplementary supports to the beneficiaries is an important factor to complete the program within a reconstruction period of one to two years.
An important concern relates to the technical quality of the houses built by the owners based on local resources and technologies. A general concern expressed is that the traditional construction methods and practices are responsible for the large number of collapsing building experienced either during natural disasters. Most of these arguments are based on the technocratic bias for modern technology and materials, and the top-down approach to determine what is good for people and the types of building materials and designs to be used during reconstruction. The ‘community perceptions’ that ‘modern’ building designs and materials; particularly the concrete and column and beam structures are more secured during natural disasters undervalue the traditional technologies. However, experiences from the Turkey and Gujarat earthquakes do not support such a conclusion.
Evaluation of the various approaches discussed above during the Gujarat Earthquake Housing Reconstruction Program suggested that the supplementary financing approach has achieved a higher level of community participation and the houses are built better as a result of additional financial contribution from the donor communities. Nearly 95% of the beneficiaries are satisfied with this approach and the rate of satisfaction is 94% in the case of self help approach and 91% in the case of NGO partnership approach. In comparison, the rate of beneficiary satisfaction is 40% in the case of contractor built in-situ housing.
Since the success of the self help approach rely on factors such as: (a) easy access to local labor and building materials, (b) stability in the construction costs; i.e. inflationary pressures are either contained through government regulated supply of materials, which is seldom feasible in large reconstruction program; (c) local know how on building houses using local traditional methods, incremental housing construction practices, and (d) flexible time line to complete the construction works, are not operationally feasible in large reconstruction program, the government has to sponsor and encourage the ‘supplementary financing approach’.
The main conditions for effective implementation of the ‘supplementary financing approach’ are the following. The approach should primarily target the most vulnerable families, if the co-financing funding is limited and could not cover all the families, and that the co-financing agencies should not interfere in the selection of building technology and practices and use of building materials and that the beneficiaries should have the full ownership and decision making power of determining the construction processes. Community and beneficiary empowerment are crucial in this approach.
An important challenge for the successful implementation of the owner driven housing program in the disaster prone areas is the appropriate selection of building technologies. A detailed evaluation of local building practices and traditional technologies would be desirable before ‘adopting’ alien modern building practices. This perspective is reinforced by the international experiences that the traditional technologies withstood the ravages of the disasters such as earthquake and cyclone equally well as that of the buildings built on modern technologies. It is also observed that contractor built houses and houses built on relocation sites are less preferred and unsustainable as compared to the owner built houses require a serious reexamination of some of the flawed assumptions of reconstruction process currently in practice.
The views expressed in this article are personal and do not represent the views and opinions or the institutions with which the author is associated.
Department of Environment, Construction and Design, UAS, Switzerland, “ A comparative Analysis of the Six Housing Reconstruction Approaches in Post Earthquake Gujarat, 2005.
