Emergency Housing Need Sparks Creative Designs

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4973680

Ari Shapiro
NPR
October 2005

Homelessness on a regional scale is often one result of natural disaster -- whether that's a hurricane in the United States or an earthquake in Pakistan. Architects inspired to meet this challenge with emergency housing solutions have often run into a problem: getting their ideas into the field.

Carib Martin recently built a new house on his property in Bethesda, Md., that he calls the H.E.L.P. house. The acronym stands for Housing Every Last Person.

It took Martin about a week to build his $8,000 emergency house. The structure was designed to go right on the property of a person who has just lost their home, a scheme intended to revive communities quickly.

Building the H.E.L.P. house once was relatively easy. The hard part is getting partners to use it in a real-life disaster.

A nonprofit group called Architecture for Humanity tries to help designers get their projects to those who need it after a natural disaster. Kate Stohr is one of the organization's founders. She says the process can take years.

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