Collaboration for more comprehensive housing assistance

In supporting the housing recovery post-disaster, extensive funding is often associated with many rebuilt houses. This perception applies to any housing recovery setting. Whether the government or donor-driven leads it or supports to self-recovery approaches, numbers reflect achievements and budgets. It can be seen on the government recovery website, which mentions the names of the aid agencies, the working areas, and the number of houses built. But, just relying on house numbers can be misleading.  Aside from houses, other significant assistance, such as providing access to public infrastructure such as clinics and schools, and primarily to their livelihood, are often vague.

The provision of those mentioned above should be seen as a prerequisite for comprehensive recovery assistance. For instance, the absence of economic improvement will make them unable to extend their house or even repair it if something is broken. In a relocation area, the conditions can be worse; they might leave the housing that governments or recovery actors provided and go elsewhere to places where all infrastructures are available. For instance, following a tsunami or landslide, the government might issue a policy to relocate people in the affected area to safer places. The process of relocation itself might take years to complete. Often, only houses are provided without adequate infrastructure. And on many occasions, livelihood cannot be changed. For instance, relocating fisherman to safer areas that are too far from sea and fish markets will cost them on their daily transportation. Hence, a comprehensive solution should be designed before moving people to a relocation area.

The challenges for on-site recovery and relocation are similar if access is unavailable. Hence, recovery actors’ assistance should not be quantified only by the number of houses built but also by the area that provides a chance to improve living. The problem is that the cost of such recovery will be very expensive for a single recovery actor to shoulder. The need for collaboration with the non-housing agencies will be the solution. For instance, people might be overlooked when including agencies with expertise in land titling to solve ownership issues. Planning to set up a cooperative and new local entrepreneurship initiatives is sometimes discussed during rebuilding progress. On the other hand, those non-housing actors are also challenged to justify their assistance in a humanitarian intervention; mainly, their support is in the development phases.

Comprehensive recovery should be advocated as a preparedness measure; otherwise, establishing collaboration would be too late. The government should lead this initiative and develop a partnership model among recovery actors and non-humanitarian sectors. The opportunity for collaboration should be an advocacy that should be endorsed, resulting in standby mode if disaster events happen.

Arwin Soelaksono

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