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Home Sweet Home: Housing Solutions for Urban IDPs

Published 03/31/2015 by Global Communities

haiti-ravine-pintade

Home Sweet Home: Housing Practices and Tools that Support Durable Solutions for Urban IDPs
Despite a longstanding recognition of the need to improve the response of actors addressing urban displacement, there is a lack of guidance on how to do this and a limited knowledge of practices that have successfully addressed the housing, tenure security and livelihood needs of urban IDPs. This report, the result of collaboration between IDMC and the MIT Displacement Research and Action Network (DRAN), presents different approaches and case studies that have been used to overcome recurrent challenges to adequate housing in urban displacement situations. It advocates for the use of a rights-based approach that supports the achievement of durable solutions by providing options that can guide and inform response when designing, funding or implementing housing policies and programmes in urban settings for policy makers and practitioners. Read the full report here.
Included within the report is a case study on Global Communities’ work using a neighbourhood approach to reconstruct a community in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, many neighbourhoods or katyes were severely damaged and their residents displaced. One such area was the Ravine Pintade informal settlement situated between Port-au-Prince and Petionville, which was home to nearly 2,000 families. To facilitate return to Ravine Pintade, it was determined that the settlement would have to be rebuilt and upgraded. CHF International (now Global Communities) and Project Concern International (PCI) developed a katye improvement programme that combined humanitarian assistance with a longer-term development approach emphasising recovery and the upgrading of the settlement. In effect, the programme not only supported IDPs’ prompt return to Ravine Pintade. It also contributed to an overall improvement in residents’ access to adequate housing.
Read the extended case study: Katye neighbourhood improvement programme in Ravine Pintade.