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Abstract
Pressure to rebuild quickly may be the “greatest obstacle” to delivery of permanent housing in the aftermath of a disaster. This pressure dooms many postdisaster rebuilding (PDR) projects to failure, although there is little agreement on what defines project success. This research draws upon previous research in multiple disciplines to present a theory of rebuilding for permanence that encompasses key indicators of project success from sustainable construction, resilience, and PDR. The selected case, the Hurricane Houses of Islamorada are a unique example of postdisaster housing that was both rapidly deployed and permanent. In 1935-36 in response to the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, three small clusters of single-family homes were rebuilt from the ground up in the Florida Keys, an archipelago at the extreme southeastern end of the United States. Raised in under a year, the concrete Hurricane House project was built through a public-private partnership with the American Red Cross using federal and private funding. Using the Hurricane House case, this research linked construction outputs to project outcomes by examining the contributing project characteristics (CPCs) leading to the achievement of goals established for PDR projects. This research validated the causal mechanisms established through the review of literature and by expanding the use of Historical Building Information Modeling (HBIM) through the overlay of historical and analytical data. Based on these discoveries and the strong support of contemporary documentation, it is likely that between 20-28 concrete Hurricane Houses were built in the year following the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane. Although research suggest that the Hurricane Houses performed well against PDR project goals and were deemed successful, the program of restoring and rebuilding private homes was not continued after subsequent hurricane destruction in the New Deal era, suggesting that there is a disconnect between project success and repeatability, likely due to cost, public opinion, and lack of project postmortem. This research established a paradigm of PDR project success that emphasized human actions and organizational traits as contributing factors for project success.