Habitat for Humanity aims to erect one-room houses in Haiti

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Home-building charity Habitat for Humanity hopes to erect thousands of expandable one-room houses to shelter Haitians left homeless by a devastating earthquake, the group's chief executive said on Thursday.

"We need direction to make sure we build the homes where the infrastructure is going to be," said Habitat for Humanity CEO Jonathan Reckford in a telephone interview.

One million to 1.5 million Haitians are estimated to have lost their homes in the January 12 quake that has posed a rebuilding challenge that could take many years, he said.

Hundreds of thousands of residents of Port-au-Prince may be moved outside the ravaged capital, where many have taken shelter in 200 scattered encampments, Haitian officials have said. The quake killed up to 200,000 people,

Habitat for Humanity's durable, steel-framed "core houses" are equipped with water tanks and latrines and will cost roughly $3,000 each to construct, depending on materials costs in the impoverished Caribbean nation, Reckford said.

The one-room homes can be expanded room-by-room at a cost of $300 to $500 as resources become available, he said.

The homes are quake-resistant, a comfort for Haitians terrified by frequent aftershocks. Rather than the concrete roofs favored in Haiti that collapsed and crushed many victims, the homes have galvanized aluminum roofs.

"We'll customize the homes to make them suitable for the Caribbean. It will be simpler and cheaper than the usual Habitat home so we can help as many people as possible," said Reckford. He was speaking at his office in Atlanta after returning from two days in Haiti.

Core houses would be preferable to tents that are often set up after disasters and intended as transitional shelters, but which end up being miserable, long-term encampments, he said.

The group, which operates in 85 countries and enlists volunteers to build low-cost homes from the ground up, runs two training and building materials facilities in Cap-Haitian and Gonaives in Haiti.

Depending on the level of donations it receives, the group will scale up production of panels for the core homes and train Haitians as masons to give them a livelihood and sustain the rebuilding effort.

"They estimate 200,000 homes have been destroyed. We're committed to be there for the long term," which likely means several years, Reckford said.

"What we really need, in the short-term, is money," he said. "There will be opportunities for volunteerism later on."

(Reporting by Andrew Stern; editing by David Storey)