Navigating transition: post-disaster housing pathways of households: Fid-Bau Portal

Navigating transition: post-disaster housing pathways of households

Tafti, Mojgan Taheri / Bashiri, Mahsa

Abstract The hazard literature has documented the unsuccessful results of post-disaster transitional housing programs, attributing them to misunderstandings and misconceptions about transitional housing. This implies a mismatch between the ways ‘experts’ and decision-makers conceive and plan transitional housing and the ways people perceive, experience and use them. This paper explores the use of a housing pathways framework to improve our understanding of the multiple ways in which transitional housing is perceived, experienced and used by disaster-affected people in low-income cities. For illustrating this point, we focus on the case of the city of Sarpol-e Zahab in Iran that was struck by an earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale in 2017. The paper relies on a fieldwork study conducted in 2017–2018 in the city. This case provides a number of insights, in particular given that the state programs provided two options of cash grant and pre-fabricated units to households for transitional housing. In addition to reporting transitional housing activities in the city, we show that the four identified housing pathways in this city account for pre- and post-earthquake structural forces as well as households’ own choices and strategies for adaptation. Highlighting how households’ post-disaster trajectories were influenced by different aspects of post-disaster policies and interventions, the paper concludes with some recommendations for transitional housing programs in the context of lower-income cities.