Best Practices in Housing Reconstruction:  An Analysis of Case Studies from Post Mitch Honduras

            After visiting 42 reconstruction housing projects scattered across the nation the CEDAC team chose Villa Linda Miller as Honduras’ overall best practice for post-Mitch reconstruction housing.  The beneficiaries came from Colonia Miramesí, a marginal barrio in the capital with all the attendant social ills and economic limitations.  Their old neighborhood had been built in a risk zone on the banks of a river that swelled with Mitch’s rains and washed away their houses and almost all of their belongings.

            While taking shelter at a downtown church the community was visited by a professional social worker Michael Miller, who happened to be in Tegucigalpa on a mission to aid street children and other troubled youth.  Under Miller’s tutelage, the inhabitants of the future Villa Linda Miller developed a strategic plan and a social vision and then set about trying to make it a reality.

            The community’s unusually participative, principled request for help was greeted enthusiastically by donors and guided the development of an integrated project that not only solved their post-Mitch housing crisis but left them better off than they were before the storm.  The community’s ongoing commitment to that social vision gives us reason to believe they can expect continued improvement in their standard of living.  For the families of Villa Linda Miller, the tragedy of Hurricane Mitch was successfully transformed into an opportunity for development.

            At the heart of this transition are the ideas set forth in the community’s slogan:  “Faith, Effort, Unity.”  In interviews residents expressed extreme satisfaction with their new lives, having traded a problematic existence in a marginalized urban barrio for a more secure existence in a community of their own, collective design.

            Once they had developed a social vision the beneficiaries of Villa Linda Miller were able to line up an impressive list of donors who provided financial, material and technical support.  CEDAC helped get the project moving with training on community organizing and with developing mission, vision and a strategic plan.  A donation for purchase of the land came from Michael Miller’s church among other donors and the community was named after his mother.  Site selection was carried out by the community itself, which then purchased the land outside Tegucigalpa on the highway to Olancho.  They received important backing from the Honduran Red Cross, which provided social workers and construction supervisors.  NGOs CARE and CHF funded the water tank and a modern sewage treatment plan, respectively.  USAID provided funds and OIM provided expertise.

            The Honduran Government, through its Secretariat of Public Works, Transportation and Housing (SOPTRAVI) graded the hilltop site to prepare it for the construction of housing.  National utility companies contributed to water and electrical infrastructure and installed a community telephone.  Other eventual contributors to the community, recognized on a plaque in their park, included:  Hughes Corporation, Burger King, El Derecho Internacional, Daimler Chrysler Corp., the Central American Parliament, Sita Intercom, Congress members of the Dominican Republic, Industria de Pilas and Monsanto Costa Rica. 

Design                                                

            Villa Linda Miller was designed by a local architect hired by the community, and is built on a breezy hilltop that offers pleasing panoramic views but is not too steep to accommodate the community’s 162 houses.   At the entrance is a well-constructed guardhouse.  Only one road provides access to the community, enhancing security.  A network of yet unpaved roads run among the houses, allowing the bus to enter and circle through the community before exiting where it entered.  Residents are assured a bus stop close to their front doors.  The bus route serving Linda Miller is the extension of a pre-existing route.  The bus comes every hour and provides reasonably inexpensive and timely transportation to downtown Tegucigalpa, which is about 13 kilometers away.

            The community’s water system includes a 65,000 gallon water tank, a backup pump and backup well.  Its sewage treatment system is among the best low-tech, low-cost technology available and a matter of great pride within the community.  They have organized garbage collection and disposal system for which each family pays five lempiras (about U.S. 30 cents) a week.  A large, centrally located lot, used for storage during construction, provides a protected, easily accessible location for the primary school that is still on the drawing boards.  A secondary school is located in a nearby community, a factor that weighed heavily in the community’s choice of site.  Additional communal space was planted with corn when the CEDAC team visited and community members said their plan was to rent the space for commercial use with the proceeds going to the community treasury.

            The design for Villa Linda Miller’s houses was arrived at in consultation with the community.  Several innovative building technologies, some imported, were considered.  Two separate model houses were built on site and the community chose the larger of the two, which was more appropriate for the average family size.  The design accommodates a family of 4 to 6 people in a 204 square meter lot.  It includes a living room/dining room, kitchen, and three bedrooms, with the traditional outdoor sink and clothes washing facility and a back patio with a small yard. 

Execution                                                          

            The construction phase lasted 8 month and involved beneficiaries directly in the building of houses, independent of the provision and installation of services and streets.  As a matter of fact, the volunteer building supervisor, Santiago Girón, resided in one of the unfinished model homes during the entire building process.  The residents moved into their new homes in 2001, before all of the basic services were in place, but were able to secure those services in less than a year. 

Sustainability                                                   

            For the major donors of the post-Mitch reconstruction program, reconstruction effectively is over.  For the community of Villa Linda Miler their reconstructed life in a neighborhood they played a major role in building is just beginning.  The community continues to attract funding and is investing in community facilities and is showing concern in defending their quality of life in the presence of recent not-so-well inspired housing projects in the vicinity.  They have a strong community organization with a community council, or patronato.  Attendance is good at frequent community assemblies.

            Work continues to improve the neighborhood streets and drainage and to landscape the park at its entrance.  A reforestation project in the works will result in two trees for every lot.  Perhaps the most encouraging sign for not only sustainability of community, but for sustained development, is that all resident families have agreed, following their original strategic plan, to allot 30 hours a month for the next five years to community works.  To help organize these efforts, the community is subdividing itself into seven groups corresponding to its seven blocks, each of which will elect a supervisor who will in turn report to the patronato. 

            Franklin Matamoros, a community member who was welding on the fence around the basketball court when we arrived, said Villa Linda Miller’s social vision included a new form of community organization.  “Before we had a patronato, but it didn’t work,” Matamoros said.  “We were used to the old style of patronato,” which was more responsive to outside political interests than to the community.  The new style has been modeled around the needs of the community.  We achieved unity.  There are more people involved and, best of all, our young people are getting involved.”

            When CEDAC visited the site in August 2002 community members were busy building an outdoor recreation facility that would accommodate basketball and soccer.  The sports project was realized with financial support from a church in St. Louis, U.S.A., the Greentree Church.  This relationship is another indication of the community’s sustainability, since it will outlast the presence of international aid organizations whose commitment to Villa Linda Miller was defined by the temporary Mitch reconstruction program.

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