Introduction
Workshop Aim1This workshop was set up, designed and prepared by the Beirut Urban Lab team.
The workshop invited multiple stakeholders involved in Lebanon’s housing sector to participate in the co-production of a strategy for expanding the provision of adequate and affordable housing in Beirut through interventions on the existing dilapidated and underused multi-story residential buildings and clusters in the city. By upgrading this privately held stock of housing, and introducing protective rental agreements and adequate management models, the proposal aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of enacting the right to housing and reducing daily uncertainties for the city’s most vulnerable residents. The workshop further sought to explore redistributive modes of repair that rely on local materials and small-scale local enterprises. It finally explored the adoption of ecologically responsible modalities of repair that would reduce energy consumption and improve long-term sustainability of the existing housing stock. The proposed interventions considered the current overlapping (political, judiciary, financial, economic, and social) challenges, and they mainly relied on existing tools and frameworks within the current policy and legal frameworks.
As a first step in the process of building a housing coalition, the workshop sought to initiate a longer-term process of co-learning among stakeholders involved in the housing sector. The collaborative process of collective thinking and design are hence a first commitment towards collaborative initiatives in support of enacting the right to housing in Lebanon.
Context
The workshop falls in line with new global approaches to activate existing stocks of urban housing since global actors involved in the housing sector have recently shifted from building new affordable housing complexes to upgrading existing dilapidated units.
Beirut and other cities in Lebanon contain a substantial stock of dilapidated and neglected housing units. These units are vacant, partially inhabited, or sometimes overcrowded with residents suffering from tenure insecurity and poor living conditions. The ownership of these units varies. Many are held by real-estate developers or investors (both Lebanese and foreigners) who keep them vacant or rent them out temporarily until the opportunity to redevelop arises. Others are held by private owners and/or families who are either enticed by potential redevelopment, or torn in family feuds and/or financial difficulties.
An ongoing investigation by the Beirut Urban Lab23 Beirut Urban Lab website: www.beiruturbanlab.com has approached this topic under the rubric of Precarious Lives34 Precarious Lives platform link: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/cccb8c8863c945f6a57340dace891808.The case studies describe multiple cases of dilapidated housing units in the locations of real-estate development projects on hold, family disputes preventing repair, and/or unimplemented public projects place areas “under study” indefinitely while their residents remain “temporarily” in place for decades. The platform locates these case studies in the context of the past thirty years where public policymaking has incentivized financial investments in land and apartments, while social policy has lagged behind. According to the study, current property owners, whether real-estate developers or individual property holders, rent out housing units to households selected from vulnerable population groups who can be evicted without prior notice, while they await a more lucrative redevelopment opportunity.
Workshop Outline
As a start for the workshop, Soha Mneimneh, an urban planner and research coordinator at BUL, presented a typical case-study of urban decay and inadequate shelter, in Bachoura, linking existing housing vulnerability with the causes, dynamics, and historical circumstances that have generated delayed eviction, tenure insecurity, and poor living conditions.

Participants were invited to reflect on possible interventions, approaching the housing challenge through three complementary cycles of sustainable development:
- the economic cycle (includes creating employment opportunities and directing capital towards affordable housing activation),
- the energy cycle (includes environmental and climate change adaptation interventions), and
- the habitability cycle (providing tenure security and adequate repair standards).
After the presentation, the participants, representatives from NGOs, INGOs, public sector employees, activists, researchers, academics, investors, and engineers, joined smaller working groups where they explored collectively possible modalities of intervention to respond to the challenge of adequate and affordable housing along the above-cited axes. The case study allowed participants to engage in experimentation with possible modalities that could be eventually scaled up to larger intervention programs through which upgrading can occur by bringing together NGOs, public actors, housing advocates, property owners, tenants, and activists on one table. In this first round of discussion, workshop participants were invited to look closely at the elements of the case and to deliberate and develop together feasible strategies of interventions that they are willing to engage in. Participants were also encouraged to leverage the know-how developed in shelter rehabilitation during the last decade of post-blast recovery and refugee responses.
By invoking the notion of precarity, we aim to shift attention away from poverty as a measurement of lack attributed to specific individuals or groups. Instead, we focus attention on the forces that generate the deprivation and uncertainty increasingly observed in today’s Beirut (and beyond).
Workshop Moderators
The workshop was moderated by BUL and Habitat, Mona Fawaz (mf05@aub.edu.lb), Soha Mneimneh (sm201@aub.edu.lb), Abir Zaatari (az67@aub.edu.lb), Isabela Serhan (is51@aub.edu.lb), Samar Farhat (SFarhat@habitat.org), Rami Bou Reslan (RRestan@habitat.org).
Workshop Outcomes and Challenges
The workshop indicated strong support for an approach to housing provision that capitalizes on the existing housing stock. Interest came particularly from non-governmental organizations invested in the #right_to_housing. Most participants were engaged in the discussions and interested in the possibilities presented by a prospective intervention. At least three NGOs reported working on somewhat similar initiatives that approached the provision of affordable housing through repair.
Identified Challenges
Building particularly on their recent experiences working on post-blast repair in Beirut, participants pointed to a number of challenges to be carefully considered:
- Difficulties in coordinating across actors and initiatives, particularly in the absence of governmental bodies
Difficulties coordinating among actors involved in shelter rehabilitation was identified as a key problem. Participants reflected on the recent post-disaster repair experiences, noting that the absence of a clear coordination body rendered collaborations and task prioritization difficult. A number of participants further pointed to poor coordination as exacerbating inequality in the distribution of aid and the provision of repair works. Participants expected that including landlords, developers, and tenants in decision making would complicate coordination processes further, requiring clear organizational design ahead of interventions. This was particularly the case because interests in these conditions are not aligned, and there will be a need to introduce appropriate incentives to bring everyone on board. - Difficulties in securing long-term financing
The lack of financing caused alarm to almost all participants. While programs funding shelter rehabilitation had peaked during the first year following the Beirut port explosion, local NGOs are now finding difficulty in continuing their shelter rehabilitation efforts. Many pointed to the need for creative and sustainable financing strategies. - Difficulties in selecting eligible beneficiaries justly
Since the proposed project would involve the selection of eligible future tenants to be allocated empty units, participants pointed to the difficulties of selecting beneficiaries who could occupy vacant apartments, given the excessively high needs. Some suggested that it may be best to delegate the selection to market channels and the decisions of property owners when possible, finding it hard to respond otherwise appropriately to conflicting and dire needs. - Difficulties in defining the locally applicable standards of repair
Participants discussed challenges in identifying a common adequate standard for what constitutes “adequate” housing. In the absence of nationally adopted standards of housing affordability, and with little to no experience in the provision of this type of housing in concerted form, it was agreed that criteria to produce adequate housing were missing. This had constituted another challenge during the post-blast repair, particularly as NGOs had to draw a balance between acceptable conditions without triggering evictions or an increase in rent value triggered by a landlord’s perception of “higher value” standards. The challenge was further complicated by the rising costs of energy that mandate that climate-control measures would also be mainstreamed as part of a housing affordability scheme. - Securing adequate repair for heritage buildings
A substantial number of buildings that can be reused into a stock of affordable housing requires specialized and expensive repair work. This was particularly the case of buildings with special heritage value (classified or not by the Directorate General of Antiquities), notably those with substantial structural damage. The adequate repair of these buildings requires expensive materials, placing the costs above the means of lower-income residents and NGOs unless special support was leveraged –which is rare. - Building management and maintenance
One of the main identified challenges is the long-term management and maintenance of buildings and clusters, especially at the level of common shared spaces. Bringing to point the examples of buildings developed by the public sector in Lebanon, many participants urged for interventions that would either invest in mixed-use housing, find NGOs to manage buildings, or identify working mechanisms that would prevent the long-term dilapidation of buildings. - Difficulty in adopting and implementing contractual rental agreements protective of tenants’ right to housing
Participants pointed to the reluctance of landlords and real-estate developers to agree to fixed contractual agreements. Even when governmental or non-governmental bodies record contracts, proper implementation remains a challenge. As a result, many participants pointed to the difficulty of securing benefits for tenants from repair unless a much stronger involvement and oversight of public agencies are secured. - The challenge of collective spaces and missing infrastructures
Aside from fixing individual buildings, several participants pointed to the difficulty of repairing shared building facilities and neighborhood-level amenities as critical elements of an adequate shelter policy. This included water, electricity, and other services that not only render life difficult for city dwellers but also impose prohibitive costs on their expenditure budgets. They further pointed to the absence of public agencies as rendering these tasks particularly arduous. - The challenge of scaling up
While participants agreed on the need to start with pilot initiative as a strategy of learning by doing, they pointed to the importance of identifying strategies of scaling up and replicating interventions beyond individual cases. - The missing state
A final concern revolved around the missing state. Beyond coordination (see above), participants pointed to the fact that several challenges were typically filled by public agencies (e.g., setting standards, implementing contracts). In the absence of such central roles, it would be difficult to move forward.
Workshop Recommendations
Having identified the challenges to be faced, participants further identified pathways to address them. These recommendations looked at modes of cooperation among actors, models of financing, and methods of project design
- Capitalize on the momentum and find partners willing to join efforts
Participants suggested a series of follow-up workshops to capitalize on the current momentum for future implementation. They recognized the recent experiences in post-disaster repair as having built valuable capabilities (e.g., repair strategies and know-how) that they could leverage in future interventions. They further expressed interest in learning from international experiences, and several NGO representatives found it valuable to align intervention strategies.
Collaborative Progress - Create a long-term collaborative process of work among all actors
In order to foster better coordination among different stakeholders, one group of participants proposed that collaborating NGOs develop collectively neighborhood-level data, sharing and unifying information as a strategy to foster agreement among actors. They further suggested that NGOs negotiate with all actors together, under one unified umbrella, providing the same incentives for landlords to participate. - Governmental bodies should supervise implementation and mitigate gentrification
Participants agreed on the imperative of bringing back the state: governmental bodies need to be brought on board, particularly as regulatory and supervising bodies. They should supervise the proper implementation, organize landlord-tenant relations, and mitigate gentrification in the long term. The two main governmental agencies mentioned during the workshop are the Municipality and the Public Corporation of Housing. The Order of Engineers and Architects can assist with supervision since renovation permits are usually submitted at the OEA.
Setting in Place - Introduce self-financing schemes
In order to overcome financing difficulties, particularly for long-term maintenance, participants suggested the introduction of self-financing schemes that could replace the demand for large funds. One option was to introduce within projects small-scale businesses where revenues could be collected as income to support the cluster’s maintenance and improvement. Another option proposed was the adoption of mixed-income housing as a solution to support long-term financial sustainability, with the added advantage of avoiding the marginalization of buildings stigmatized as “affordable” or “for the poor”. - Conduct a full assessment of each building prior to the intervention
Each building requires a different intervention based on a different set of factors. A full assessment of each building should thus be conducted prior to any intervention. This includes an assessment of each building’s occupancy, classification, type of building ownership, mode of occupancy, and resident profile. - Recognize the specific considerations for every intervention
Every building “scenario” requires a different intervention, and creative schemes need to be considered in order to secure funding, owners’ consent, and adequate repair. One suggestion was to expand the scope of the intervention when needed through the adoption of measures such as a transfer of development rights for fully occupied buildings held by a real-estate developer in order to defer the costs without displacing people. This proposed intervention allows the developer to pool several lots and transfer building rights to empty corner lots where investment and building are more profitable, compensating hence –at least partially- his possible losses. - Adopt common eligibility criteria to ensure the right to housing for everyone
In order to overcome the difficulty of selecting eligible recipients, several NGOs recommended defining eligibility/selection criteria ahead of interventions, and developing these criteria for different social groups. Such criteria would include paying close attention to individuals with physical disability and securing a gender-balanced equitable distribution of benefits. Eligibility criteria can also be used to make sure repaired heritage buildings are used by vulnerable populations. UN-Habitat recently adopted this scheme. Any heritage building that is approved for repair works should house residents classified as “vulnerable”.
Modes of Repair - Consider participatory approaches
Participants pointed to participatory approaches as a long-term method for overcoming the difficulties of setting adequate standards, maintaining buildings, and managing services. These approaches could empower the design of socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable standards, help adapt to climate change, and account for special needs. One mode of securing long-term participatory approaches is by setting up stakeholder committees to include different actors, secure needs are met, and lessen potential conflicts. In addition, participants suggested that these committees elect representatives to manage and maintain individual buildings, and that they form committees at the scale of the cluster and the neighborhood level to coordinate with municipal authorities. - Adopt contractual rental and repair agreements protective of tenants’ right to housing
Participants insisted on the necessity of adopting contractual agreements that contain potential conflict that might arise between landlords and tenants. Two types of agreements were discussed:
1. Developers/NGOs repair agreements: These repair agreements should mandate that developers or property owners allocate a number of units as “affordable”, securing reasonable income. How/where the rate is set will have to be defined. Conversely, landlords or developers would secure revenue through market rate units that would be mixed in the same cluster. Multiple variations and rates were defined, but it was agreed that an appropriate feasibility study should be conducted.
2. Tenant/Landlord Agreements: These agreements need to be protective of tenants, particularly in affordable units, and they should be clearly recorded and protected by a municipal authority and/or the housing agency. - Think value chain
Aside from the additional stock of housing, the proposed intervention has the potential to introduce employment opportunities and generate income in a valuable and redistributive form. Such interventions require NGOs to rely on local teams, train locals in long-term building maintenance and management techniques and prioritize in material selection local and easily repairable interventions. - Consider models of shared ownership
Among models of shared ownership, cooperatives were evoked as sustainable long-term solutions if/when possible, particularly as they secure a permanent stock of affordable housing and require less coordination by external bodies. - Negotiate neighborhood-level interventions
Benefit from current neighborhood-level interventions and incorporate them with shelter upgrading strategies. For example, UN-Habitat, and Habitat for Humanity in partnership with CRS are working on repairing building infrastructure and adding street lights in certain neighborhoods. These INGOs can target dilapidated clusters where these elements require drastic interventions.










- 1This workshop was set up, designed and prepared by the Beirut Urban Lab team.
- 23 Beirut Urban Lab website: www.beiruturbanlab.com
- 34 Precarious Lives platform link: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/cccb8c8863c945f6a57340dace891808