FEB 18: THE AP REPORTS ON LACK OF A PLAN TO SHELTER THE 1.2 MILLION PEOPLE LEFT HOMELESS, SHANTYTOWNS GROW AS DOES THE THREAT OF MASS OUTBREAKS

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Haiti's Quake Survivors Don't Wait For Gov't Plan

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"The government has said for weeks that they have identified sites, but time is getting short and there has been little progress," said Ian Bray, an Oxfam spokesman.

That's one problem. Another is that people simply do not want to go far from where they always lived and worked. With property hard to come by, aftershocks continuing and 38 percent of Port-au-Prince's buildings destroyed by the magnitude-7 quake, according to U.N. satellite imagery, their options are limited.

"People are displaced, they've lost their homes but they haven't lost their jobs," said Alex Wynter of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "The key issue is land."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, making the first visit ever by a French head of state to his nation's former colony, pledged 16,000 tarps and 1,000 tents to house 200,000 people while touring the ruins of Port-au-Prince's collapsed national palace Wednesday.

Haiti's own leader, President Rene Preval, has been less decisive.
"We have to find a solution to get people under shelter — a combination of tents, tarps, corrugated tin roofs ... whatever combination it is," Preval told The Associated Press during a half-hour interview this week. He did not elaborate.