Stage two and beyond: Improving residents' capacity to modify reconstruction agency housing

This paper discusses strategies to improve the longer-term outcomes of housing built by reconstruction agencies in the aftermath of disasters. Considering the reconstruction efforts undertaken in Aceh Province, Indonesia, after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami as a case study, the paper analyses house form, construction technologies and building materials in the light of subsequent efforts of the residents to make their own improvements to these houses. More than 140,000 new houses were built by more than 120 international non-government organizations (NGOs), more than 400 Indonesian NGOs and a range of other humanitarian and philanthropic agencies. However the authors' previous research has detailed that a significant number of residents have subsequently gone on to modify their houses to improve their living conditions and has outlined some of the most common resident initiated modifications. This paper suggests that reconstruction agencies working to provide housing after disasters should be aware of their potential to contribute to more effective long-term results, and should therefore build houses or facilitate the reconstruction process in ways that make the resident's own modifications easier to accomplish.