Housing the Homeless in Ecuador/Dando cases a los sin techo del Ecuador

THIS BOOK DESCRIBES the Viviendas del Hogar de Cristo project which, to date, has provided 30,000 houses in Guayaquil, a city where 600,000 people are estimated to live in very poor conditions. (Regular readers of Environment&Urbanization might remember Jorge Anzorena’s paper in Vol 5, No1 (1993), which described the development of Hogar del Cristo – meaning, literally, the home or hearth of Christ – in Chile, where it has provided over 200,000 housing units). The dwellings supplied by the organization are made of prefabricated bamboo panels, can be assembled in a day by family and friends, cost between US$ 500–900 depending on size, and can be fully purchased by beneficiaries over two years, owing to the low-cost credit that is made available through a local bank. These houses cost approximately one-seventh that of the cheapest government built housing.

Viviendas del Hogar de Cristo supplies panels, floor joists and planks, window and door frames and roofing, all assembled into a pack at the organization’s manufacturing plant, and trucked to the site. Beneficiaries supply the land (to which they must have legitimate access), interior partitions and the labour for assembly. They are encouraged to think of these houses as a first step in the ongoing process of achieving long-term secure housing. The book describes the advantages of bamboo construction (including preservation and the use of bamboo as a concrete reinforcement). It supplies plans for the houses and includes a copy of the assembly instructions, which are designed to be accessible even to those who are illiterate. It also describes briefly the details of financing, including the means by which one-third of the houses are provided free to the poorest clients. Also included is a brief description of the more recent Hogar de Nazareth programme, an action-research project which has been designed to improve the standard houses and integrate housing provision into a more comprehensive community development approach.