The Rural Housing Project and its effect on Housing Health and Safety Indices in Bam

Abstract Housing indexes are tools for assessing housing conditions and its evolution and can also be used in assessment of the success rates in achieving the future planning goals. The current study was done in order to evaluate and compare the health and safety indices in the houses of the Rural Housing Project, constructed after the 2003 earthquake in Bam, with the traditional houses in this region. This descriptive cross sectional study was done by systematic sampling and the health and safety indices of 519 new and 283 traditional houses in ten villages of Bam were evaluated and compared by standard questionnaires. In these checklists the safety of the houses, the living conditions according to the principles of environmental health engineering and the physical space of the buildings was evaluated. Descriptive results were reported and the chi-square test was used to compare the data by Excel and Minitab. The results of this study show that the number of families living in each house, in the new and traditional houses was respectively 1.15 and 1.24 family per house. The mean surface of each house was 60 and 50 square meters and the mean ratio of people to rooms was 2.63 and 2.29 respectively. The health status of the walls, surface and ceiling of the rooms in the new houses was acceptable in more than 97% but in traditional houses was 67-76 percent. The health status of the kitchen and rooms in the new houses was significantly better than the traditional houses, but the condition of the toilets and baths in both houses was unacceptable in most circumstances and was for toilets 7 and 16, and for baths 55 and 74 percent in new and traditional houses respectively. The safety indices of the rooms and kitchen were significantly better in the new houses (46 and 39 percent respectively in new houses), but the safety of the bath and staircase was significantly better in the traditional houses (54 and 53 percent respectively in traditional houses). The current study shows relative progress in the housing indexes of the rural housing project in comparison to the traditional houses, although they are still far from ideal. There are concerns about the ratio of person to space, accessibility of healthy water inside the house, and environmental sanitation in regard to wastewater and waste disposal. Also in addition to construction of living spaces, we suggest that building private baths and toilets should be considered by the Housing Organization.