110 Sturdy Homes for Haiti: How a Church Network Rebuilt After Hurricane Matthew for Under US$5,000 a House

• Hurricane Matthew killed nearly 900 people in Haiti in 2016
• A church partnership repaired or built 110 houses
• Each new home cost between US$4,000 and US$5,000
• The United Church of Christ sent US$76,000 to Haiti for recovery

More than a year after Hurricane Matthew tore through Haiti in 2016, killing nearly 900 people, a church-backed rebuilding programme was putting families back under solid roofs. The United Church of Christ reported in January 2018 that an ecumenical partnership working through Church World Service had repaired or constructed 110 houses.

The costs were modest by any standard. Each new home came in at between US$4,000 and US$5,000. Alongside the housing work, the partnership assessed 29 public schools, three of which were being rebuilt.

UCC Disaster Ministries had sent US$76,000 to Haiti in total. Of that, US$10,000 went to cholera prevention and the treatment of malnutrition, and another US$10,000 was set aside for northern Haiti, which took further damage from Hurricane Irma in 2017.

The report named families who had benefited. Marie Rose Thermie, a mother of six, had lost 8 goats, 2 pigs, 2 donkeys, 19 chickens and 9 pigeons to the storm, a reminder that in rural Haiti a hurricane wipes out savings held as livestock as well as the house itself. Selondieu Delva compared his new home with the one Matthew destroyed. “The house I had before was no house, compared to this one. This was constructed well,” he said.

The programme shows what church networks can do when they pool money across denominations and borders and put it into simple, well-built homes rather than temporary shelter. Its per-house figures also give a rough benchmark for what a modest, storm-sturdy rural home cost at the time.

Matthew was the same storm that put eastern Jamaica on alert in 2016, and the lesson carries over directly as Jamaican churches help families rebuild after Hurricane Melissa. Congregations here and in the diaspora in the UK, the US and Canada can have more impact by combining funds through one ecumenical channel, agreeing a standard, sturdier house design, and making sure each family has secure tenure on the land before building starts, so that the new home is an asset the household can keep.

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