Housing reconstruction after conflict and disaster

Housing is essential to the well-being and development of most societies. It is a complex asset, with links to livelihoods, health, education, security and social and family stability. Housing acts as a social centre for family and friends, a source of pride and cultural identity, and a resource of both political and economic importance. Housing is also an extremely vulnerable asset, and the destruction of homes or their loss through displacement or dispossession is one of the most visible effects of conflict and natural disaster. Almost 80,000 houses were destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, leaving some 300,000 Central Americans homeless. The Gujarat earthquake in India in January 2001 left almost a million families without homes. During the Kosovo conflict, a third of the province’s housing stock was destroyed, while war in Sierra Leone saw the destruction of an estimated 300,000 houses, leaving over a million people displaced. Disasters have a greater impact on the built environment of developing countries than industrialised ones. According to the World Bank, losses due to natural disasters are 20 times greater in developing countries than in developed states.