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Rebuilding Haiti: Creating a mortgage system for homes
Haiti’s struggle to rebuild homes for hundreds of thousands of quake victims may be giving the impoverished nation something it has never had: loans to help people buy them.
If efforts by international donors and local agencies succeed, at least a few members of Haiti’s small middle class will be able for the first time to get a mortgage. Some of the efforts reach even further, offering micro-mortgages for families who make as little as US$150 a month.
The hurdles will be significant in a nation where 70 percent are unemployed, many land titles were destroyed in the January 2010 quake and banks have little experience in offering loans to anyone but the country’s tiny elite, leaving most of Haiti’s 10 million people to rent their housing.
Even those who would seem to qualify are finding it a struggle.
Radio journalist Hertelou Vellette, who has worked for the same company for 11 years, has waited for more than two months to learn if a state bank will help finance a US$52,000 two-bedroom prefabricated house.
And that’s after he submitted title deeds, a letter of employment, bank statements for the past six months, credit card statements for the most recent three months, water and electricity bills, statements from other income sources, a land survey and a copy of his identity card.
He also had to pay a nonrefundable US$500 fee for the application. Most Haitians don’t have credit cards or a bank account, let alone US$500, a sum greater than what most earn in six months.
