Recovery, housing, land and property and large-scale response

1From emergency to durable housing

A shelter strategy is conceived from day one as a pathway: emergency shelter, repair or incremental shelter, then durable housing. Each step must prepare the next: a well-designed transitional shelter becomes the core of a permanent house, and well-supervised repairs strengthen resistance to the next hazards. Avoid investments that lock families into temporary situations, such as costly structures on land without security of tenure.

For people displaced over the long term, shelter contributes to the durable solutions defined by the IASC framework: voluntary return, local integration or settlement elsewhere in the country, in safety and dignity. Shelter is then linked with livelihoods, public services, property restitution and urban planning.

2HLP at scale

At scale, housing, land and property issues become strategic: lost documents, destroyed land registries, secondary occupation, contested inheritance, forced evictions. A sound response includes:

• an HLP analysis of the context (formal and customary land tenure systems, women's rights, dispute resolution mechanisms);
• harmonised due diligence procedures and model agreements validated by the cluster and the authorities;
• legal assistance and mediation mechanisms, often with specialised partners;
• protection of tenants and informal occupants, who often make up the majority of those affected in urban areas.

The aim is not to settle every land dispute, but to avoid causing new harm and to strengthen the security of tenure of the most vulnerable.

3The area-based approach and planning

The area-based approach (or settlements approach) starts from a defined territory, a neighbourhood or a municipality, rather than from a sector or an individual household. It brings together local authorities, communities and sectors around a shared diagnosis and action plan: housing repairs, roads and drainage, water, schools, markets, risk reduction.

It is particularly suited to urban contexts and recovery phases. It requires detailed mapping, participatory governance (neighbourhood committees), alignment with urban plans and close coordination between clusters. Neighbourhood profiles and risk maps become shared planning tools.

4Leading a large-scale response

A response reaching hundreds of thousands of households requires common standards: kits and specifications, transfer values, shelter typologies, safer construction messages, targeting criteria. The Shelter cluster produces the strategy, the decision tree for options, the 4W and gap monitoring, and feeds into the humanitarian response plan.

The supply chain must be anticipated: regional prepositioning, framework agreements with qualified suppliers, quality inspection, transport and warehousing capacity. Management relies on outcome indicators (households living in adequate shelter, security of tenure, satisfaction) and not only on the number of items distributed. Advocacy brings quantified needs, gaps and obstacles (access to land, restrictions on materials) to donors and authorities.

5Designing the transition to durable housing

The transition from emergency to durable housing cannot simply be declared after six months: it is prepared from the first week onwards, through choices that open or close off possibilities. A tarpaulin distributed with tools and safer construction messages already serves repair; a tent pitched on land without an agreement creates a camp that nobody will know how to close.

Reconstruction models

Core shelter or core housing

The principle is to provide a durable basic structure (foundations, frame, roof, often one safe room of 18 to 24 m²) that the household will then complete. For this to work:

• the structure complies with safer construction principles for the local hazard and, as far as possible, with national standards;
• it uses materials and techniques that local artisans have mastered;
• the design provides for extension (location of the second room, extension of the roof);
• security of tenure is ensured for a period at least equal to the lifespan of the structure;
• the cost per household is consistent with that of neighbouring programmes and of public reconstruction.

Aligning with public reconstruction

After a major disaster, the government usually conducts a Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA), with support from the European Union, the United Nations and the World Bank, and then sets up a housing reconstruction programme. Humanitarian organisations must align with its typologies, amounts and criteria, or explain why they depart from them; a large difference in amounts between two neighbouring programmes generates tensions and complaints. The cluster acts as the interface.

Durable solutions for internally displaced persons

The IASC Framework on Durable Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons sets out eight criteria for determining whether a solution has been achieved: long-term safety and security; an adequate standard of living, including adequate housing; access to livelihoods and employment; effective mechanisms that restore housing, land and property or provide compensation; access to personal documentation; family reunification; participation in public affairs; and access to effective remedies and justice. Three of these criteria directly concern the shelter sector.

A transition programme is judged by one simple question: in three years' time, will the assisted households be living in housing that is safer than before the crisis, on land from which nobody can evict them? If the answer is not documented, the programme has no transition strategy.

6Housing, land and property at scale: procedures and tools

Typical challenges

• Lost or destroyed documents, incomplete or burnt cadastral records.
• Plurality of tenure systems: formal titles, customary rights, long-standing informal occupation, verbal rental agreements.
• Secondary occupation: other people occupy the homes of displaced persons.
• Exclusion of women, particularly widows and divorced women, through inheritance rules or the practice of registering only the male head of household.
• Forced evictions from informal sites and land speculation after the disaster.

The reference principles

The United Nations Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons (the so-called Pinheiro Principles, 2005) establish the right to restitution and compensation, respect for secondary occupants and equality between women and men. The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement protect against arbitrary displacement and arbitrary deprivation of property. These texts underpin the cluster's advocacy with the authorities.

Method: securing tenure for tens of thousands of households

1. National HLP analysis led by the HLP Area of Responsibility of the Protection Cluster, or by the Shelter Cluster's HLP working group: legal framework, tenure systems by area, institutions, dispute resolution mechanisms, priority risks.
2. Harmonised verification procedure for all partners: list of acceptable evidence (documentary and non-documentary), cross-checking steps, public posting periods.
3. Template agreements validated by the authorities: certificate of occupancy, landlord-tenant agreement, land use agreement for sites.
4. Community enumeration: participatory mapping of plots and rights, using tools such as the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) promoted by UN-Habitat and the Global Land Tool Network, where cadastral records are lacking.
5. Legal assistance: information, counselling and accompaniment by specialised partners, mediation of disputes, referral to the courts when essential.
6. Protection of tenants: advocacy for a temporary moratorium on evictions, written leases, rental assistance, mediation of arrears.
7. Monitoring: indicators on evictions, disputes opened and resolved, and households holding an occupancy document.

Tool: list of acceptable evidence of occupancy

The aim of a shelter programme is not to resolve a country's land law. It is to avoid causing new harm, to avoid excluding those who have no title, and to leave every household with more secure tenure than before.

7Implementing the area-based approach step by step

The area-based approach (or settlements approach) starts from a defined geographical area and coordinates several sectors there around an assessment and a plan shared with the authorities and the population. It is particularly suited to cities, areas of return and recovery phases, where housing needs cannot be separated from roads, drainage, water, schools and markets.

Step 1: delineate the area

The boundary follows limits that make sense to residents and authorities: administrative neighbourhood, municipality, drainage basin. The area is small enough to allow genuine participation (often a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of inhabitants) and large enough for infrastructure to be coherent.

Step 2: establish governance

• An area committee bringing together local authorities, residents' representatives (including women, young people, tenants, displaced persons and the host community), technical services and the organisations working there.
• A lead organisation for the area, which facilitates and coordinates without taking the place of the authorities.
• Written rules: roles of each party, frequency of meetings, decision-making procedure, complaints mechanism.

Step 3: produce the area profile

The profile brings together demographics, tenure status, condition of buildings, services and their accessibility, risks (flood, landslide, fire), the local economy, social dynamics and tensions. It combines secondary data, surveys, participatory mapping and observation. It is presented as a short document with shared maps.

Step 4: develop the area action plan

Step 5: implement, monitor and hand over

Monitoring combines output indicators by sector with area-level indicators (proportion of households in adequate housing, access to services, perceived safety). From the outset, the plan provides for the gradual handover of coordination functions to the local authorities.

The area-based approach is not a way of dividing up neighbourhoods between organisations. It is a way of putting the sectors at the service of an area and its residents, under the authority of those who govern it.

8Full example: the cluster strategy after the Nalvérie earthquake

Fictional context. An earthquake strikes northern Nalvérie. The authorities and the joint assessment count 120,000 damaged or destroyed dwellings, 45% of them in urban areas (54,000) and 55% in rural areas (66,000). 30% of affected dwellings are destroyed. In urban areas, 40% of households are tenants; in rural areas, about 5%. The cadastral records of two municipalities have burnt. Winter arrives in four months. You are the deputy cluster coordinator and must propose a strategy to the Strategic Advisory Group.

Step 1: segment

Simplifying assumption: one household per dwelling. The strategy specifies that this will need to be corrected using the actual number of households per dwelling, which is higher in urban areas.

Step 2: phase the options

• Phase 1 (0 to 3 months): shelter kits for 60,000 households (all destroyed dwellings and the most severely damaged ones), NFI kits for 80,000 households, winter kit for high-altitude areas; host family support; emergency rental assistance for tenants.
• Phase 2 (2 to 12 months): conditional cash for the repair of owners' damaged dwellings; core shelters or one safe room for owners whose dwelling is destroyed; six months of rental assistance for tenants, combined with rehabilitation of vacant housing.
• Phase 3 (6 to 36 months): permanent reconstruction led by the government programme, with which the cluster harmonises typologies and amounts.

Step 3: cost

The cluster presents this figure as the total requirement, then distinguishes the share targeted by the Humanitarian Response Plan (all of phase 1, and about half of phase 2 covering the most vulnerable households) from the share expected to be covered by the government reconstruction programme and development donors.

Step 4: define common standards

• Standard kits and specifications, a repair value of USD 650 and a core shelter value of USD 1,800, subject to revision according to a price index published every month.
• Earthquake-resistant construction messages validated by the ministry and the professional association of engineers.
• Harmonised HLP procedure, with a list of alternative evidence for the two municipalities without cadastral records, and agreements co-signed by both spouses.
• Common targeting criteria for phase 2.

Step 5: outcome indicators

A cluster strategy is defended with traceable figures: every amount in the budget table must be able to be reconstructed from a number of households and a documented unit value.

9Managing a large-scale response: supply chain, teams and risks

The supply chain

• Prepositioning: regional and national stocks of shelter and NFI kits, sized on a planning scenario (for example 10,000 to 20,000 households for a cyclone-prone country), with rotation of perishable items.
• Framework agreements with suppliers pre-selected on the basis of specifications and samples, allowing orders to be placed within a few days.
• Common logistics platforms with the Logistics Cluster for warehousing and transport in the acute phase.
• Construction materials: analysis of the impact of humanitarian demand on the market, bulk purchasing when the market cannot keep up, attention to the origin of timber (legality, deforestation) and to import restrictions.

Sizing the teams

The risk register

Management indicators

Management relies on outcome indicators rather than on the volume of items alone: proportion of households in adequate shelter, compliance of works, security of tenure, time between targeting and first payment, rate of stalled sites, complaints received and handled within deadlines. The cluster dashboard aggregates them by area and highlights gaps for advocacy purposes.

10Common mistakes, contextual variations, interview questions and references

Common mistakes

• Costly transitional shelters without security of tenure, abandoned or demolished a few years later.
• Diverging amounts between neighbouring programmes, a source of tensions and complaints.
• Relocation decided without consultation to sites far from livelihoods, which households subsequently leave.
• Tenants forgotten in reconstruction programmes focused on owners.
• Volume indicators only: number of houses built, with no measurement of quality or of actual occupancy.
• Area-based approach confused with dividing up neighbourhoods between organisations, without common governance with the authorities.

What donors and evaluators look at

• Consistency with the government reconstruction plan and the cluster strategy.
• Documented security of tenure for every construction.
• Verified technical quality, with inspection reports.
• The link between shelter, livelihoods and services, and the contribution to durable solutions.
• For evaluations, the OECD DAC criteria adapted to humanitarian action, in particular connectedness between emergency and development.

Contextual variations

Interview questions

1. "How do you move from emergency to recovery in a shelter programme?" Emergency options that prepare for what comes next (kits with tools, safer construction messages), repairs as early as possible, core shelters on secure land, alignment with the public programme, links with livelihoods.
2. "What do you do if the cadastral records have been destroyed?" List of alternative evidence, community enumeration, public posting, agreements validated by the authorities, legal assistance, attention to women's rights.
3. "Explain the area-based approach to a country director." Defined area, governance with authorities and residents, area profile, multi-sector plan, area-level indicators, handover to the authorities.
4. "How do you cost a cluster's requirements?" Segmentation by group, harmonised options and unit values, support costs, distinction between total requirement, humanitarian target and the share falling under development.
5. "What indicators for a response covering 100,000 households?" Adequate shelter, technical compliance, security of tenure, timeliness, complaints; not just volumes.

Key references

• IASC: Framework on Durable Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons (2010).
• United Nations: Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons (Pinheiro Principles, 2005).
• Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.
• World Bank: Safer Homes, Stronger Communities: A Handbook for Reconstructing after Natural Disasters.
• European Union, United Nations and World Bank: Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) guidelines.
• Global Shelter Cluster: guidance on the settlements approach and work of the Urban Settlements Working Group.
• UN-Habitat and Global Land Tool Network: land management tools, including the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM).
• Sphere Handbook 2018, Shelter and Settlement chapter.