Many storm- resistant houses in Da Nang have still remained intact after the recent devastating floods caused by typhoon Damrey which swept through Central Viet Nam early this month. 

A storm resistant house in Man Thai Ward

These houses were built under the ongoing ‘Implementing Incentives for Climate Change Resilient Housing for the Urban Poor in Viet Nam” project which is partly funded by the Nordic Development Fund (NDF). 

This project aims to partly increase the use of storm-resilient housing amongst low-income earners in Central Viet Nam.

Under the project, NDF has given financial assistance to help poor families across the city to build new storm-resistant houses or to reinforce their existing weak ones.

As of October this year, a total of nearly 3 billion VND had been spent on building storm- resistant houses for a total of 117 needy families from 43 local wards and communes.  Of this figure, 1.65 billion VND in non-refundable aid was given by NDF, and the remainder came from the US’s Rockefeller Fund.  

Local poor families received between 10 million VND and 30 million VND each in either non-refundable assistance or low interest rate loans from this large-scale project to build their own houses, depending on their financial circumstances.

In March 2018, 27 other storm-resistant houses will also be built for local needy families.  This, thereby, brings the total number of such housing to 580 since 2011. 

Ms Tran Thi Anh from Hoa Vang District’s Hoa Chau Commune, one of the beneficiaries from the project, said she felt secured whilst living in her storm- resistant house during the recent flooding.  She added that 30 million VND out of her house’s construction costs were granted by the project budget.