Housing project built by Venezuela at Zorange, in Port au Prince, photo by Haiti Grassroots Watch
By Reuters, in New York Times, April 16, 2014
A post-earthquake housing program in Haiti financed by the United States Agency for International Development has delivered only a quarter of the planned number of houses at nearly twice the estimated cost, a government audit has determined. The housing program was part of reconstruction efforts after Haiti endured a devastating earthquake in January 2010 that killed more than 200,000 people and destroyed about 105,000 houses. The audit found that the development agency had severely underestimated the cost and the complexity of building homes in Haiti.
The agency had planned to build as many as 4,000 new houses by December 2012 and to provide 11,000 sites where new houses could be built. But only 906 new houses have been completed, and fewer than 6,220 sites have been prepared for construction. Meanwhile, the budget jumped to $90 million from $55 million.