Julie Schindall of Oxfam in Haiti,
About 10 days ago, we found out that the government of Haiti identified a site for temporary location of homeless people living in flood-prone settlements in Port-au-Prince. They took two months to identify the site and we had one week to prepare it.
It's a desert-like flat plain about 15 km outside of PaP. The dust is intense. We sent out emergency WASH (water, sanitation, hygiene) teams to install latrines, showers and water bladders. They were the only ones working on the site up until the last day before the arrival of the first group of IDPs (internally displaced people -- ie, people left homeless by the quake and living in settlements). Our engineers installing latrines had to wear face masks to protect against all the dust. The American military calls that site "peanut butter camp," because when it rains, the plain turns into a brown mud pit.
That's not to say the site can't be made workable.