Haiti’s housing crisis, rooted in decades of urban migration, earthquake displacement, and inadequate public investment, deepened in 2019 as the economic crisis pushed more families into precarious housing situations. While the massive tent camps of the post-earthquake period had largely been cleared, many of the families who had lived in them had moved into informal settlements on Haiti’s urban periphery that offered minimal security and few services.
In these settlements — known in Haiti as bidonvilles — families lived in makeshift structures of corrugated metal and wood, often on hillsides vulnerable to flooding and landslides, without reliable access to clean water, sanitation, or electricity. The political crisis of 2019 had added to the pressures these communities faced, with gang violence expanding into some informal settlements and economic hardship making it impossible for families to invest in improving their housing.
Land tenure was a persistent problem. Without legal title to the land on which they lived, informal settlement residents were vulnerable to eviction and had no collateral with which to access credit for home improvement. Organizations working on land tenure reform argued that providing residents with legal security was a fundamental prerequisite for genuine housing improvement.
The government’s housing program, underfunded in the best of times, had essentially ceased to function during the political crisis. International organizations called for housing to be treated as a human rights priority in any post-crisis recovery plan.