The dialogue started with the opening remarks presented by Rami Bou Reslan, Habitat for Humanity’s Country Focal Point in Lebanon. The remarks highlighted the right to housing, and adequate housing and shelter, as a human right recognized and protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. It is the right to live in security, peace, and dignity, with protection against forced evictions, and freedom to determine where to live. This right also contains entitlements including Housing, land, and property rights (HLP), equal access to housing, and participation in decision-making related to housing at the national and community level.
Two facts are jeopardizing the quality of the housing strategy in Lebanon, the absence of a clear housing vision, and the high concentration of population living in urban contexts and cities. For more than decades, housing has been transformed into a commodity instead of a right. While the built environment should embrace spaces to live, work, and play, it has been deeply affected by neoliberal policymaking, where there has been less focus on the social and use value of land, versus its exchange value. With land being considered an asset, real estate developers had influenced the building development industry, and the dynamics organizing the production and exchange of housing, which led to a high vacancy rate within the city.
As an advocate and facilitator of access to safe, adequate, and affordable shelters, Habitat for Humanity has been contributing to the housing sector in Lebanon since 2002. Habitat carried out shelter rehabilitation and repairs in the aftermath of the 2006 war and later, as waves of displaced refugees arrived in Lebanon in the midst of the Syrian war, and it ensured access to safe and decent living conditions. More recently, its programming has contributed towards urban recovery and shelter rehabilitation in areas affected by the 2020 Beirut Port blast.
Habitat’s direction needed to be guided through a study on the housing ecosystem in Lebanon; including identifying housing actors from the public and private sectors, institutions, NGOs, and financial entities contributing to and influencing the housing sector; and providing a critical examination of existing regulatory and institutional frameworks in which housing recovery is occurring. For the matter, Habitat has commissioned the Beirut Urban Lab a study on “Lebanon’s housing system and self-recovery pathways” in 2021, providing an understanding of public policy making, and post-blast repairs, with a specific focus on low to middle-income populations in Beirut and other identified vulnerable locations across Lebanon. The Beirut Urban Lab developed a comprehensive study that has been instrumental in driving Habitat’s strategy for the Middle East and can provide the housing sector’s stakeholders with a meticulous understanding of public policymaking, and post-blast repairs.
