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Vice on HBO Follows the Money in Haiti
Vice on HBO Follows the Money in Haiti
Published: 25 April 2015
Vikram Gandhi, VICE on HBO correspondent travelled to Haiti to see just what happened with the $10 billion in aid pledged after the earthquake that occurred more than five years ago. The episode aired at 11 PM EST 4/24/15.
In a sneak peek, Gandhi goes to the site of a housing expo held in 2011. Organized by the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission led by Bill Clinton, the expo was meant to showcase model homes that could be built across the country. With more than a million made homeless, and hundreds of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed, providing new housing was seen as key to “building back better.”
. . .
750 of the 900 houses were built far from the earthquake, in Caracol, the site of the international community’s flagship reconstruction project, the Caracol Industrial Park. Since the filming of the VICE investigation, more information has to come to light about the houses in Caracol. While residents are being asked to pay rent and eventually take ownership of the houses, internal assessments conducted by the Army Corp of Engineers and USAID revealed that the houses were poorly constructed, with substandard concrete, roofs that are not properly attached and broken sanitation system that causes sewage to flood the area during rains. Both USAID contractors involved have been suspended from receiving further contracts while a legal investigation is being conducted.
With only around 9,000 new homes built by international donors and NGOs since the earthquake, hundreds of thousands of residents have taken to the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, to an area known as Canaan, without government services or infrastructure of any kind. While little has been done to address the burgeoning crisis, from the hills of Canaan, one can see a new $18 million sports complex built by the Olympic Committee.
More:
http://www.cepr.net/blogs/haiti-relief-and-reconstruction-watch/vice-on-hbo-follows-the-money-in-haiti