Ph.D. student K C and Professor Larsen: Autonomy key to long-term satisfaction in post-disaster housing
How can post-disaster recovery efforts maximize housing satisfaction amongst homeowners in impacted areas? Apil K C, a doctoral candidate in Taubman College’s urban and regional planning program, set out to answer this question with help from Larissa Larsen, professor of urban and regional planning, and Sabine Loos, assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering, in an article published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. “Rethinking housing recovery policy evaluation through assessing satisfaction” analyzes the impact of including a satisfaction metric when determining the success of disaster recovery policies.
K C, who is from Nepal, based his research on the aftermath of the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake. Using interview data from 33 households, the article compares the short-term and long-term satisfaction of owners who reconstructed their homes aided by government grants, NGO-led reconstruction, or no assistance. The programs had varying impacts: government grants provided less money but greater autonomy in the reconstruction process, while NGO programs offered more money but almost no autonomy in rebuilding the home.
The article highlights the experience of one NGO-supported household with the following quote from a participant interview: “We had three meetings during the design phase. They showed us the plans, and we approved them. Some of us with larger families were unhappy with the small house size, but others said if we disagreed, we might lose the house altogether and the project would move elsewhere.”
The article concludes that residents with greater autonomy were more satisfied long-term with the recovery process, while residents with less autonomy had greater short-term satisfaction. The authors recommend that recovery policy prioritize resident autonomy and that metrics of success include household satisfaction.
“A ‘good’ house, as defined by technical checklists of objective measures like reconstruction completion or even livelihood resumption, means little if it cannot facilitate everyday social practices, economic activities, and cultural continuity,” Apil wrote. “By centering recovery around satisfaction, there is the potential to move from a model of structural rebuilding to one of transformative resilience, ensuring that policies respond not just to disasters, but to the everyday needs of those who live through them.”
Read the full article in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.
