Studio Exercise 2 | Clients

Haiti development statistics (pre-earthquake):

• 55 percent of Haitians live on less than $1.25 per day.
• Per capita annual income is $660.
• 58 percent of children are under-nourished.
• 58 percent of the population lacks access to clean water.
• Devastating hurricanes in 2008 affected 800,000 people.
• Deforestation has left the nation with less than two percent forest cover.

---

Who has been affected?

• 3,500,000 people were affected by the quake
• 220,000 people estimated to have died
• 300,000+ people were injured

How have they been affected?

• Over 188,383 houses were badly damaged and 105,000 were destroyed by the earthquake (293,383 in total), 1.5m people became homeless
• 4,000 schools were damaged or destroyed
• 60% of Government and administrative buildings, 80% of schools in Port-au-Prince and 60% of schools in the South and West Departments were destroyed or damaged

What are their needs and vulnerabilities?

• Over 600,000 people left their home area in Port-au-Prince and mostly stayed with host families
• Unrelated to the earthquake but causing aid response challenges was the outbreak of cholera in October 2010. By July 2011 5,899 had died as a result of the outbreak, and 216,000 were infected
• The life expectancy for Haiti is low: 50 years for men and 53 years for women.b
• Haiti has the highest incidence of HIV/AIDS in the Western Hemisphere. One in 50 people are infected.

Are they in an urban or rural location?

• Nearly 79% of Haiti’s people live in rural areas.

What housing existed before the natural disaster? How did it deal with the division of spaces, privacy, security, climate control?

• Due to the country’s existing poverty conditions prior to the earthquake, infrastructure and residential units were inadequate and insufficient in supply
• At the peak of displacement, around 2.3 million people, including 302,000 children, were out of their homes.
• After the earthquake, 604,215 people left Port-au-Prince and the West Department. An estimated 160,000 persons moved from Port-au-Prince to the border area with the Dominican Republic.
• Even before the 2010 earthquake, only 54% of Haitians had access to sanitation facilities (toilets, indoor plumbing, sewer systems). Less than half had a regular source of safe drinking water.j

What are the climatic conditions? Cold climate? Warm, humid climate? Hot, dry climate?

• Haiti is primarily tropical and semiarid in the east. Tropical storms are frequent.

Do those displaced dwellers have cultural or religious traditions which influence their apparel, day to day activities, or social interactions?

• Eighty percent of Haitians are Roman Catholic, 16% are Protestant, and 4% are other. Voodoo is often practiced alongside Christianity.

Sources
http://www.lessonsfromhaiti.org/relief-and-recovery/key-statistics/
http://www.dec.org.uk/haiti-earthquake-facts-and-figures
http://facts.randomhistory.com/haiti-facts.html
http://traveltips.usatoday.com/weather-climate-haiti-12394.html