Compared to some of his neighbors, Jimmy Bellefleur is not doing badly. The electrician has turned abandoned government office space into a one-room home for his wife and their two daughters.
He covered the open window with a plastic tarp and installed a simple door with a lock. It’s a small bit of security for his family, who live as squatters on the upper floor of a building damaged in Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.
In this June 29, 2015 photo, electrician Jimmy Bellefleur, 35, sits on his bed in the room his family occupies inside an abandoned, earthquake damaged government office building in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Before the quake, his family lived in two rented rooms, but the building was destroyed, Bellefleur said, and they lived on the streets for more than a year before finding their current home. “I don’t have the means to leave,” he said. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Officials say most of the 1.5 million people homeless after the magnitude 7.0 quake that destroyed much of the capital and surrounding areas have now found shelter, with about 65,000 living in some 66 encampments, according to the International Organization of Migration.
Yet there are thousands of homeless like Bellefleur who go uncounted in abandoned buildings or hidden tent camps. Some are people who received rent subsidies from non-governmental groups that have since run out.
In downtown Port-au-Prince, there are people getting by the best they can in the ruins of a luxury hotel, under tarps and in a windowless trailer on the grounds of the destroyed national theater. Others are in buildings classified as too dangerous to enter.
In this June 28, 2015 photo, Loavia Bienaime, 30, comforts her youngest daughter Martina as she watches TV in the stairwell outside their room in an abandoned earthquake-damaged government building in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. “I don’t like the children here. It’s very open. There is no security,” said Bienaime’s husband, Jimmy Bellefleur. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
The iconic Iron Market, which collapsed in the quake, was restored after the disaster. But around it stretch avenues lined with street stalls masking abandoned, crumbled buildings.
During the day, hairdressers and manicurists work inside the garbage-strewn structures, which are missing walls and, in some cases, entire facades. At night, the shells of the more intact buildings are home to people like Bellefleur and his family. Because he is an electrician, he managed to rig up electricity. But they have no water and much of the structure is exposed to the elements.
Before the quake, they lived in two rented rooms in the Carrefour-Feuilles district, near downtown. But the building was destroyed, he says, and they lived on the streets for more than a year.
“I don’t like the children here. It’s very open. There is no security,” he says.
But he has no better alternative. “I don’t have the means to leave,” he says. And, he notes, “There are a lot of people who live worse than we do.”
In this June 29, 2015 photo, fan parts recovered by Jimmy Bellefleur sit stacked in the hallway of the abandoned, earthquake damaged government office building where he lives with his family in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Bellefleur’s work as an electrician enables him to buy food and afford relative luxuries such as a double bed and the used televisions and fans he’s brought back to life. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
His work enables him to buy food and acquire relative luxuries such as a double bed and the used televisions and fans that he has brought back to life.
Bellefleur’s neighbors in the building include an elderly carpenter, a computer hardware repairman, a man earning a pittance by recycling bottles, and several unemployed young people.
Zarmor Sendi lost her home in the quake and was later evicted from a camp. She now lives alone in a former bathroom too small to lie down in. At night, she pulls her meager bedding into one of the open front rooms to sleep.
Near the airport, six families live in the offices of a former shipping company. Johnly Clif Gaspard is there with his mother and two younger siblings.
Despite his mother’s full-time job in a button factory and Gaspard’s talent for making motorized toys from salvaged materials, the family can’t afford to pay rent. After the quake, they lived in a tent camp until being offered a one-year rent subsidy to leave. When that ended, they were forced to scramble again and ended up in a space that had been abandoned before the quake.
Reginald Guillaume, who lives in one of the remaining camps in the capital, says he also was offered the rent subsidy, but refused.
“The government offered me 20,000 gourdes ($345), but I said no. It’s not enough.”
He estimates about 10 families who did take the money moved back into the ravine-side camp once the money ran out. Like other camp residents, they remain in limbo, legally not allowed to build on the land, but without the means to leave.
Click on any image below to launch the gallery.
In this June 29, 2015 photo, single father Jean Donalson Tousena Bagui holds his two-year-old daughter outside their room at the earthquake-damaged Hotel Le Palace in central Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Tousena Bagui said he was a security guard at the hotel before the 2010 earthquake and stayed on as a self-appointed caretaker. He receives no compensation, he said, and has not received word from the hotel’s owner on what will become of the site. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 29, 2015 photo, a makeshift squat toilet installed over a shallow pit serves families living in and around damaged buildings behind the ruins of the National Theater, in central Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Sanititation is a problem in camps and squatter settlements alike. Many people live without access to any toilet facilities, and water for drinking and washing must be bought in by the bucket. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 29, 2015 photo, Zarmor Sendi walks along the stairwell of the abandoned, earthquake damaged government building where she’s living in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Sendi, 28, lost her home in the quake and was later evicted from a camp set up for those displaced by the quake. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 29, 2015 photo, Zarmor Sendi sleeps in an open room inside an abandoned, earthquake damaged government office building where she’s living in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. During the day, Sendi inhabits one of the building’s former bathrooms, too small to lie down in, and protected only by a thin curtain. Although the building’s residents all know each other, there is no way to secure the site, leaving children and single women like Sendi particularly vulnerable. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 27, 2015 photo, Neslie Etienne, 28, seen through a hole in mosquito netting, sweeps the room she shares with her husband and six-year-old son in an abandoned shipping container in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 26, 2015 photo, a worn yoga mat is the only padding to sleep on for a family of three living in one room of an abandoned shipping depot in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The six squatter families residing in the building have each taken an office as a bedroom, but at night, they say, other homeless workers come to sleep on the floor in the depot and hallways. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 27, 2015 photo, Fritzna Oralist, 12, eats lunch inside an abandoned shipping depot where she lives with her mother and three brothers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. After the 2010 earthquake, some residents returned to unsafe homes or moved into damaged and abandoned buildings across the capital. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 29, 2015 photo, carpenter Camen Innocent builds a market stall with a built-in seat for a client, outside his room in an earthquake-damaged government building in central Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Innocent, 57, says he was the first person to take up residence in the abandoned building after the quake. For the last several years, the residents have lived here largely undisturbed. But they know the government could return to reclaim the building at any time, leaving them on the street once again. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 26, 2015 photo, a young woman shares a cracker with a kitten in a post-earthquake tent camp that residents are hoping to turn into a permanent neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. More than five years after a magnitude 7.0 quake destroyed much of the capital, there are few visible signs of the disaster and the vast majority of the people who were displaced have found homes. But there are still tens of thousands of people who have never been able to repair their homes, whose rental subsidies have run out or who never managed to find permanent housing in the first place. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 27, 2015 photo, a man uses a shard of mirror to check his reflection as he passes the time with other residents inside the abandoned shipping depot where they live in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Some residents of the building have full-time jobs, while others are partially-employed or look for day work. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 29, 2015 photo, Jimmy Bellefleur, 35, and wife Loavia Bienaime, 30, sleep in the room their family occupies in a government office building that was damaged in the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Five years after the earthquake, the couple and their two young daughters remain homeless, but his work as an electrician buys food for the family, and has allowed them the relative luxuries of a double bed and repaired, but working, televisions and fans. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 29, 2015 photo, houses pack a hillside in the Jalousie district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Haiti suffered from a severe housing shortage even before the 2010 earthquake. According to a January 2015 report by Amnesty International, the earthquake further increased the deficit. Meanwhile reconstruction efforts focused on building temporary shelters over permanent housing. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 29, 2015 photo, a young man walks to an upper level inside an earthquake-damaged building where young men are squatting in central Port-au-Prince, Haiti. At night, damaged but intact buildings serve as homes to some of the many still left homeless after the 2010 earthquake, even if the structures lack water and other amenities. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 26, 2015 photo, Mirlande Senate, 17 and eight-months pregnant, stands in the small makeshift shelter where she lives alone in a Cite Soleil tent camp set up for people displaced by the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Orphaned years earlier and with no family to protect her, Senate said she has occasionally had to engage in prostitution to survive. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 29, 2015 photo, a resident of the earthquake-damaged Hotel Le Palace makes his way downstairs from the room he inhabits in central Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Though much of the hotel was destroyed, some of the guest rooms, which still have intact walls, have become homes to people displaced by the quake. The ruined hotel has no running water or working sanitary facilities. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 29, 2015 photo, hairdresser Loavia Bienaime, 30, sits on her bed as she prepares to begin her day in the room her family occupies in an government office building that was damaged in the 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 26, 2015 photo, single mother Manushka Doneis, 18, sits inside the abandoned shipping company building where she lives with her siblings and five-month-old daughter in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 27, 2015 photo, Johnly Clif Gaspard, back left, heads to Sunday morning Mass with his mother and two younger siblings, as they leave the abandoned shipping depot where they live in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Although his mother works full-time in a button factory and Gaspard earns money selling motorized toys built from scrap materials, the family cannot afford to move out of the depot where they are squatting along with five other families. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 26, 2015 photo, two-year-old Naika Pierre sleeps on a bed in the dirt-floor tent where she lives with her parents in one of the remaining post-earthquake camps in Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. When the earthquake struck in 2010, the building where Naika’s parents were living in Cite Soleil was heavily damaged and they were forced to move into a tent camp inside the slum. Five years later, they are still living under pieced-together tarps, with cardboard and cinderblocks, the only buffer from a dirt floor that can turn to mud in the rains. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
In this June 26, 2015 photo, a boy sits in a tree inside a tent camp set up for people displaced by the 2010 earthquake but that has turned into a longterm settlement in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. According to the International Organization for Migration, nearly 65,000 people were still living in 66 camps as of March 31, 2015. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
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AP Images is the world’s largest collection of historical andcontemporary photos. AP Images provides instant access to AP's iconic photos and adds new content every minute of every day from every corner of the world, making it an essential source of photos and graphics for professional imagebuyers and commercial customers. Whether your needs are for editorial, commercial, or personal use, AP Images has the content and the expert sales team to fulfill your image requirements. Visit apimages.com to learn more.
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One thought on “Five Years After Quake, Haitians Turn Ruins to Homes”