Haiti's Homeless Are Treated Just Like America's — Badly

Last week Time magazine reported that when a devastating earthquake killed more than 200,000 people in Haiti earlier this year, more than 75 families fled to a small church for safety. The church, owned by preacher Samuel Farncois in the Delmas district of Port-au-Prince, is no more than a small shack, but it was still a structure.

The survivors settled into a makeshift tent camp — as the homeless do everywhere. At first, when the devastation was a "natural disaster" and pity and compassion for victims was running high, the land's owner — a wealthy Haitian business woman — tolerated the survivors. But recently, once NGOs began installing latrines and providing other aid, she balked and demanded that the families leave.

According to Time, "She refused an offer to rent the land until better shelters could be found for the refugees; since then, residents say they have faced police harassment aimed at forcing them to leave. 'They tell us, 'Get out of here, you're nothing but dogs',' says Rosena Desriveaux, 21, who still lives in the Delmas camp in a threadbare tarp shelter with her unemployed husband and 8-month-old baby." She said her family has nowhere else to go.

Sound familiar? The landowner, who is known as Madame Biton, isn't stopping there. She is trying to tear down the church, which she personally approved. And, she has gone as far to have dump trucks pour loads of earthquake rubble on the lot to force people away. Call it the equivalent of police shredding tents. Biton even had the latrine walls torn down and now the refugees say they only use the facilities at night when they can't be seen.

Thankfully, Time doesn't pull any punches in trashing the lack of generosity of  some Haitian landowners. Reporters Tim Padgett and Jessica Desvarieux write, "Haitian landowners — part of a social elite widely considered to be one of the hemisphere's least charitable to begin with — have lost patience with the shantytowns that have grown up on their mostly idle properties."

Compassion born of natural tragedy — earthquakes, fire, floods, tornadoes and hurricanes — is short-lived. Once the media packs up and the television crews go home, compassion, for the most part, packs up too.

Photo credit: MUmland