Chapter 6 - Housing

Summary

Without doubt, the greatest single effort in the reconstruction of Mostar was housing repair. It transformed the overall aspect of the city. The view from the bypass road, which was routed over the eastern hillsides, revealed a scene of utter devastation in 1994. Most roofs were destroyed and the mess of ruination was visible everywhere. Two years later, the same viewpoint revealed a sea of freshly tiled roofs, and pristine white apartment houses. The scale of the change was remarkable. Well over 6000 dwellings were repaired at a cost of DM40 million. It is, however, far easier to spend money on a few high-value buildings than to spend the same money on hundreds of low-value buildings, since each such building has a separate site, a separate owner, separate documentation and so on. The administrative complexity is formidable, and also, of course, housing generates more passion than other building types, since it affects each family more intimately. The scope for anger and resentment was there on a large scale, but, in spite of terrific pressures (particularly on municipal officials and THW [Technisches Hilfswerk]) we sustained our effort and the success was acknowledged at grass-roots level.

The local municipalities had already begun to survey damage in mid-1994. But they had no computing resources, and data were gathered in an unstructured way, so that it was hard to deduce priorities, allocate resources, manage action and monitor change.