Temporary Disaster Housing

Research of Temporary Disaster Housing was supported by The Department of Homeland Security through the Southeast Region Research Initiative (SERRI).

The aim of the research is to envision an inventory of reusable housing units that meet the unique requirements of disaster housing, which can be produced by multiple manufacturers at a cost-effective scale, streamline the housing unit life-cycle, and be configured for the size and composition of a range of households in varying disaster situations.

The formative design challenge of the Re-Usable Disaster Housing is to plan for the second and third disaster. Even though the housing need after a disaster is temporary, the housing inventory should be designed and constructed to have a long life-cycle. Single-use disaster housing, which is either disposed of or decommissioned, is wasteful and will never create an inventory that is ready to be deployed. Standardized specifications that can be produced by multiple manufacturers would allow FEMA to quickly increase the housing inventory and respond to disaster housing needs in a more intelligent and sustainable way. A standardized, reusable approach to disaster housing will allow lessons learned to be implemented and incremental improvements to be made without changing to an entirely new product and unit design at each disaster cycle.