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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Amid jitters over the expected return today of exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide less than 48 hours before a presidential election here, many Haitians face a more basic problem: a housing bubble that is pricing many locals out of their homes... Harley Etienne, a native of Haiti and assistant professor of city and regional planning at Georgia Tech, agrees that a so-called “disaster economy” has hugely inflated the Haitian capital’s real estate market. Even before the quake, Haiti was known as "the Republic of NGOs." That was only exacerbated after Jan. 12, 2010. “The prices are way out of scale, to the point that I don’t know how you can justify some of it,” says Mr. Etienne, who is part of a US-based research team assessing earthquake damage in Haiti and its impact on local communities. “Part of it is tied to how devalued the Haitian currency is, but Haitian property owners are certainly trying to get some money while the getting is good.”
