• Local councils need educating on housing alternatives used in other developing nations, such as packed earth, wooden and other prefabricated dwellings: there is currently a distinct reluctance on the part of city council officials to relax housing regulations, seeing this as posing a health and safety risk to residents. Their position is that everyone deserves good quality housing and this is what the laws currently enforce. • The international community should consider prioritising the building of sewerage, water and road networks in areas where stands have been allocated in urban areas. This would reduce one of the most arduous cost burdens currently facing local councils and plot holders. Sewerage and water systems in and of themselves cannot be usurped, and their provision would go some way to meeting the concerns of councils with regard to health and safety issues in developing urban areas. Quite simply the choice is to do something on a large scale – or to continue to do very little or nothing. If nothing is done, then obviously in a year from now, the situation will have changed only for the worse for the hundreds of thousands who have lived in hopeless squalor since their shelters were demolished over a year ago. Photo 3: Bulawayo, May 2006: “Rain pours in, pours in, we sleep in wet bedclothes” 11