Serious question: The article says that there are roughly 10 million people living in Haiti. It also says that the Red Cross collected roughly 500 million dollars in donations. To me this sounds like it would have been a better idea to take whatever they wanted for themselves and give the remaining lets say 400 million in equal parts to the people of Haiti. Even if only 50% of that money would have reached its destination, each of the Haiti people would now have 20 million dollars to built up new lives. So why would these organizations try everything to buy land there and build houses and stuff - instead of just giving the money to the people who need it. Except for taking the money for themselves, obviously.

And I'm sorry but I cannot believe that one would actually need more than 300 million dollars to get an arbitrary amount of money to 10 million people.