Types of Temporary Housing After a Disaster

Q: How much space per person does temporary housing need?

At least 3.5 m2 of covered living space per person in tropical or warm climates, with a 2 m minimum height, rising to 4.5 to 5.5 m2 where cold weather lasts three to five months, per the UNHCR Emergency Handbook.

Tony Miller

6 days ago

6 min read

Temporary housing after a disaster falls into six types: host families, collective centres, family tents, plastic-sheeting shelters, rental or cash support, and transitional shelters. Whichever you choose, UNHCR's floor in warm climates is 3.5 m² of covered living space per person.

What are the common types of temporary housing?

The six types differ in who provides the roof, how fast it goes up and how long it lasts. UNHCR's guidance on strategic considerations in shelter responses, last updated 26 June 2025, lists most of them side by side: family tents, plastic sheeting, shelter kits, collective centres, rental support and host arrangements, transitional shelters and refugee housing units.

In practice a response uses several at once, in this order of speed:

Host families. Displaced people stay with relatives or friends. Nothing is shipped, so it is the fastest option, but it is also the easiest to miss in an assessment.
Rental and cash support. Families rent a room or house, with cash assistance covering rent and related costs.
Collective centres. UNHCR describes these as multifamily shelters that give rapid covered space in empty buildings or similar. Schools, halls and warehouses are the usual candidates.
Family tents. Delivered in volume, erected by the family, and standardised across agencies.
Plastic sheeting and shelter kits. Tarpaulins, rope and sometimes tools and poles, so families can build their own roof from local materials.
Transitional and temporary shelters. Purpose-built household units, which come in the next section.

The rule is UNHCR's own: individual family shelter is preferred over communal accommodation for privacy and emotional safety. A collective centre is a bridge, not a destination.

What is the difference between emergency, temporary and transitional shelter?

The words are used loosely, and the loose use causes real procurement mistakes. The IFRC's Post-disaster shelter: Ten designs (Geneva, 2013) gives working definitions that most shelter teams still use:

Emergency shelter is short-term shelter that provides life-saving support, the most basic that can be provided immediately after the disaster.
Temporary shelter is a household shelter designed as a rapid solution; by prioritising speed and limiting cost, its lifetime may be limited.
Transitional shelter is rapid household shelter made from materials that can be upgraded or re-used in more permanent structures, or relocated from temporary sites to permanent locations.
Progressive shelter is planned from the start to be upgraded to a more permanent status.
Core shelter is designed as part of a future permanent dwelling, usually one or two rooms the household extends over time.

The same IFRC book makes the point that matters most to a buyer: a design cannot be transitional or progressive on its own, because the context in which it is built decides the label. A timber frame covered in tarpaulin can be emergency support in week one and transitional support in month six. So specify the intended lifetime and the upgrade path in the tender, not just the product name.

What are emergency evacuation shelters?

An evacuation shelter is temporary accommodation used when people leave a hazard before or just after it strikes, and it is nearly always a collective centre in an existing building. That makes it the shortest-lived type on this list. The IFRC definition of emergency shelter above is the right test: it exists to keep people alive for days, not to house them for a season.

The risk is overstay. A school used as an evacuation centre has to go back to being a school, so plan the exit when you plan the entry.

How long does each type of temporary housing last?

Lifespan is where budgets go wrong, because the published numbers mean different things. Two figures from the IFRC and ICRC procurement catalogue, both specified jointly with UNHCR, set the reference points:

Family tent. The Geodesic Family Tent, 18 m² is designed for a family of five and carries a five-year shelf life under normal warehousing conditions. That is storage life, not the time a family can live in it. The catalogue page was last updated on 12 March 2025.
Tarpaulin. The IFRC and ICRC tarpaulin and plastic sheeting specification states an expected life of at least four years in the strongest tropical conditions. That is a manufacturer-side minimum, not a field average.

Transitional and core shelters depend on materials, maintenance and the household's own upgrades, which is why the IFRC stresses supporting self-management rather than quoting one number. For a budget line, treat tent and tarpaulin figures as upper bounds and plan replacement earlier.

How much space does temporary housing need?

At least 3.5 m² of covered living space per person in tropical or warm climates, excluding cooking space, with a minimum height of 2 m at the lowest point, per the UNHCR Emergency Handbook (entry updated 21 January 2026). In cold climates where bad weather lasts three to five months, the figure rises to 4.5 to 5.5 m² of indoor space per person.

The 18 m² geodesic tent is sized to that number: five people at 3.5 m² is 17.5 m². The handbook treats the Sphere standards as minimums, not targets, so a collective centre packing people in below 3.5 m² fails even if the roof is sound.

Which type fits which situation?

Pick by the failure you are trying to avoid, not by what is in the catalogue.

Sudden displacement, intact buildings nearby: collective centres for days, then host and rental support. Do not leave families in a hall for months.
Sudden displacement, nothing standing: tents or sheeting kits, with the family doing the erecting. A tent is quicker. A tarpaulin kit is lighter to move, but the sheeting must meet a real specification, such as the IFRC and ICRC one above, or it will not last the season.
Displacement that will last beyond a season: transitional or progressive shelter, so that the materials survive the move to something permanent.
Anything needing space that is not a bedroom: storage, a clinic or an office. A household shelter is the wrong tool, and a purpose-built structure is the right one.

That last bullet is where SLS fits. SLS does not supply family tents, tarpaulins or shelter kits. It is the authorised distributor for Hallgruppen structures, and the SLS warehouses page lists temporary modular structures deployable in 2 to 5 days, semi-permanent structures designed for 1 to 5 or more years, and permanent steel-frame buildings, with stated uses that include medical depots, field hospitals, aid distribution centres and NGO field compounds. Our guide to modular against permanent structures in South Sudan covers how to choose between those three.

What does this look like in South Sudan?

Mostly improvised. The OCHA 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan estimates that 6.7 million people in South Sudan need shelter and non-food item assistance this year, 28 per cent of them facing critical shelter challenges, and notes that many affected families live in open spaces, public buildings or informal sites. The cluster targets 1.5 million people and prioritises 882,000, or 13 per cent of those in need.

The South Sudan Shelter and NFI Cluster, launched in 2011 and led by IOM, had 23 active partners in 2025 and delivers through in-kind relief, cash and voucher assistance, a combination of the two, and repairs and upgrades within IDP sites. With coverage that thin, the type of housing is a rationing decision: a family tent for the household with nothing, a repair grant for the one that has walls. We cover the wider humanitarian role in the role of temporary shelters in emergency response.

Frequently asked questions

What are the main types of temporary housing after a disaster?

Host families, collective centres, family tents, plastic-sheeting and shelter-kit shelters, rental support, and transitional shelters. UNHCR lists these options, and most responses combine several of them.

What is the difference between temporary and transitional shelter?

A temporary shelter is a rapid household solution whose lifetime may be limited by speed and cost. A transitional shelter is made from materials that can be upgraded, re-used or relocated into more permanent housing, per the IFRC Post-disaster shelter: Ten designs definitions.

How much space per person does temporary housing need?

At least 3.5 m² of covered living space per person in tropical or warm climates, with a 2 m minimum height, rising to 4.5 to 5.5 m² where cold weather lasts three to five months.

How long does an emergency tent last?

The IFRC and ICRC geodesic family tent has a five-year shelf life under normal warehousing conditions. That is how long it can sit in store, not how long a family can live in it.

Does SLS supply emergency family tents?

No. SLS supplies Hallgruppen modular and semi-permanent structures for storage, medical and field-office use through its warehouses range, and writes buying guidance on household shelter so that buyers can specify it correctly elsewhere.