Navigating Lebanon's Housing Crisis Challenges, Strategies, and Pathways to Sustainable Urban Develo
Navigating Lebanon's Housing Crisis
Challenges, Strategies, and Pathways to Sustainable Urban Development
Cities in a Transnational World
Housing and Urbanism, M.A.
Architectural Association, School of Architecture
April 11, 2024
Yasmina Arafat
I. Introduction
II. The Multiscalar Dimension of Poverty and Informality:
o Urbanism and Housing
o Poverty and Informality in Lebanon
o Intersections of Poverty, Informality, and Urbanism
III. Lebanon’s Current Housing Situation
o Fragmentation of the Housing Market
o Property-led Housing Framework
o Challenges and Consequences
IV. Strategic Vision
o Housing Policy Priorities
o Monitoring and Evaluation
V. Conclusion
VI. Bibliography
Systemic inequalities (figure 1) run deep across Lebanon and are further enriched by recent crises: an economic crisis (with a collapse of the value of the Lebanese pound) and a horrific explosion of Beirut Port in August 2020. In the middle of these upheavals, a housing crisis had unfolded with unaffordable, substandard and poorly regulated housing markets. Lebanon’s housing crisis is part of systemic inequalities and poverty, a system shaped and sustained by regulatory frameworks, property-centric housing-led government policies, urban and land-use policies, and informality.
This essay explores Lebanon’s housing crisis (its fragmented housing market, its property-centric housing frameworks, and its informal settlements) through an urban lens and its systemic inequalities; and suggests a policy framework (regulatory reforms, diversification of housing finance, renovation of substandard housing, and urges monitoring and evaluation) to inform future urban development, while emphasizing the multifaceted dimensions of poverty and informality within its diverse housing issues.
So, if viewed through the lens of housing as a basic human right and the centrality of housing to the wider urban development goals, Lebanon can start to see a path to a more equitable and resilient urban future for all.
Results Diagram
Lebanon’s crisis from the civil war till recently, caused an increase in inflation and governmental debt Diagram by author
Figure 1: Lebanon Inequalities Reasons and
Introduction
According to UN ‘World Happiness’ report released on March 21, 2024, Lebanon takes the title of being the second unhappiest country in the world following Afghanistan 1 (figure 2). This report uses a variety of subjective and objective economic and social variables to rate the wellbeing of people in 156 countries. The factor inputs are weighted according to the following six metrics: social support, income levels, health status, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceived corruption. This ranking raises the need for a nuanced approach to its social malaise. At the core of Lebanon’s problems lies its housing condition and its proximity to this makes it an outstanding example, not only of Lebanon’s systemic issues of both socio-economic and political order, but also of the challenges of urbanism at large.
Lebanon has been grappling with one of its most difficult periods in history since 2019, a major economic crisis that has dragged more than half the population below the poverty line, while simultaneously eroding the middle class 2. The country has faced currency devaluation, hyperinflation, an unemployment surge, and limited ability for residents to acquire housing and meet material needs. The country was also deeply influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, the devastating explosion at the Beirut Port on August 4, 2020, which caused widespread destruction in the capital, affecting more than 300,000 people 3 (figure 3).
1 “Lebanon Ranked Second Unhappiest Country in the World,” L’Orient Today, March 20, 2024, https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1372051/lebanon-ranked-secondunhappiest-country-in-the-world.html#:~:text=Lebanon%20takes%20this%20unenviable%20title,in%202024%2C%20after%20the%20Afghans
2 World Bank Group, “Lebanon Economic Monitor, Fall 2020 : The Deliberate Depression,” World Bank, December 1, 2020, https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/lebanon/publication/lebanon-economic-monitor-fall-2020
3 Philip Loft, “Lebanon in Crisis - The House of Commons Library,” House of Commons Library, accessed April 8, 2024, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/lebanon-incrisis/.
Figure 2: UN ‘World Happiness’ report 2024 Afghanistan, Lebanon, Lesotho are the three unhappiest countries, whereas Finland, Iceland, and Denmark are the most happiest..
Source Statista
Figure 3: The influence of Beirut Explosion 218 killed, 7,000injured, 300,000 displaced, 77,000 apartments damaged…
Source Al Jazeera
In Lebanon, particularly in major urban hubs like Beirut, Tripoli, and Saida, accessing affordable, suitable, and secure housing stands as a significant hurdle. The housing crisis in Lebanon is mainly triggered because of the 1970’s housing gap, in addition to the financialization 4 of property between 1990 and 2000 (including a significant increase of upmarket supply and investment demand, a precipitated rise in property prices, a strong reduction in long-term financing options, and a significant decrease in the share and depth of the rental market) 5 . These problems have contributed to maintaining a growing gap between ‘accommodation and income’, ‘housing supply and demand’ (while housing for the wealthy is oversupplied and demand has decreased, housing for the low and middle-class has become increasingly undersupplied and demand has persistently increased). As a result, the most vulnerable Lebanese, refugees and migrant workers – were pushed towards the unregulated ‘informal sector’ to access affordable housing , and they were consequently forced to undergo a process of residential stratification. Thus, the housing policies in Lebanon can be described as property-led, market-oriented, and dysfunctional.
Yet the crisis also presents an opportunity to place housing within the framework of urban planning and urban development as a whole. Housing priorities must be included within a coherent framework of integrated urban polices, and housing must be a central element of the urban agenda if Lebanon is to make progress towards greater equity and resilience in the future.
As the Lebanese state reckons with its housing crisis, a fundamental question arises: What are the systemic inequalities reproduced by Lebanon’s dominant housing paradigm? How does housing shape larger socioeconomic dynamics, and how can it be reframed as a fundamental human right on the urban scale? Through the pursuit of questions like these, and a holistic approach that blurs the lines between disciplines, Lebanon can set itself on a path to inclusive and equitable urban development. It can then secure a better future for all its citizens.
4 With the globalization of capital markets and excessive financialization, housing and real estate markets around the world have undergone major changes. One can name this process the financialization of housing in particular, which is a case in which housing is treated as a commodity that people accumulate and invest in, rather than treat it as a social need. OHCHR, “Financialization of Housing ,” OHCHR, accessed April 8, 2024, https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr -housing/financialization-housing.
5 Bruno Marot, “Developing Post-War Beirut (1990-2016): The Political Economy of Pegged Urbanization,” eScholarship@McGill, February 14, 2020, https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/zg64tp32n.
The multi-scalar dimension of poverty and informality
Housing is not just a physical built fabric but also the way social dynamics, economic forces and cultural dynamics play out. Housing is part of urbanism. The performance of cities, their inequalities, the formal, the informal and poverty are all part of a network that comes together to shape living in a city. If we look at Lebanon's housing issues, for example, we need to see them in the context of urbanism as a whole, by referring to what scholars like Mike Davis and Amartya Sen have been discussing on the issues of poverty and informality in relation to housing.
One billion people globally live in extreme poverty, oppressed, dispossessed, and starving mainly due to the neoliberal reorganization of the Third World urban economy that began in the late 1970s 6. Poverty continues to grow in Third World slums and poor cities because conventional development approaches have not recognized the multidimensional reality of poverty or informal urbanization.
Mike Davis in Planet of Slums 7 helped to expose some of the deeper causes of urban poverty rapidly rising forms of informality. He reframed poverty in a multi-scalar manner, considering the urban and critical political economy that take into account sociological, economic and political factors. Similarly, in 1998, when Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for his work on the causes of poverty, an important strand of his thinking had already equipped him with the most compelling argument for why poverty is viewed by many as much more than a lack of income or consumption: it is the systematic and daily violations of personal freedoms and rights 8 .
The multiscalar quality of poverty is significant in assessing Lebanon’s housing crisis, since poverty is present through everyday urban life – from housing to job market to accessing the infrastructure and services. Moreover, exploring residential informality in Lebanon also sheds light on the complexity of the relationship between poverty, informality and urbanism; informal settlements and their combination of insecure tenure and
6 Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (London: Verso, 2017), 45.
7 Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (London: Verso, 2017), 24
8 “Amartya Sen,” Encyclopædia Britannica, March 29, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Amartya-Sen.
inadequate infrastructure capture the visceral experience and ongoing struggles of marginalized communities in the urban built environment, where the global processes of urbanization also reproduce profound structural inequalities.
Thus, the conceptual view of housing as urbanism emphasizes the complexity of the crisis. It is not just the lack of access to housing that affects people’s lives, but also how those consequences reverberate across different domains in society. The most effective way to address housing crises is by promoting a connection and engagement across disciplines, and addressing them in an integrated and comprehensive way. For this to happen, it is imperative to understand the current housing situation in order to develop better strategies that include inclusive urban planning and address the root causes of poverty and informality, thus Lebanon can create a more equitable society where all its citizens, regardless of their socioeconomic status, have the opportunity to thrive.
Figure 4: Poverty in Lebanon
Source: The Tahrir Institute
Lebanon’s Current Housing Situation
Housing real-estate markets in Lebanon appear to be highly organized along socioeconomic, as well as sectarian, lines. Various factors combine to make the country’s housing stock unaffordable, of low quality and inadequate to meet increasing demand for housing. These include weak regulation and speculative behaviors in the property markets, a shift in residential tenure, a decline in housing quality and a huge difference between what is offered in the property market and what is actually wanted/demanded by the residents 9
In the past two decades, Lebanon’s urban land and property markets hyper-inflated, especially in Beirut where, over just 10 years (2003-2013), real-estate prices doubled in value 10. This growth also resulted from intense demand, mainly from the Lebanese diaspora and foreign investors. At the same time land prices also inflated, to constitute almost 60% of the price of a new housing unit in Beirut 11 . This is mainly because of a lack of regulatory regimes concerning property rights, taxes and administration over the land markets, mainly because of the lack of a decree masterplan - where only around 15% is covered by old zoning frameworks - that favor ‘property-led’, ‘market-based’ development and valorization of land as exchange value over use value 12 .
On the other hand, after formal tenure began counting ownership in 1943, people became more interested in home ownerships. For example. If we compare the estimates between 1970 and 2004, we can see that in the former one around 40% of the residents were interested in
9 “The Macroeconomic and Sectoral Performance of Housing Supply Policies in Selected MENA Countries : A Comparative Analysis,” World Bank, 2005, https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/724091468248086869/the-macroeconomic-and-sectoral-performance-of-housingsupply-policies-in-selected-mena-countries-a-comparative-analysis.
10 1. InfoPro, Lebanon real estate sector, 2020, http://www.databank.com.lb/docs/Lebanon%20Real%20Estate%20Sector%20(2018).pdf
11 1. InfoPro, Lebanon real estate sector, 2020, http://www.databank.com.lb/docs/Lebanon%20Real%20Estate%20Sector%20(2018).pdf
12 UN-Habitat and ESCWA, “Housing, Land and Property Issues in Lebanon. Implications of the Syrian Refugee Crisis.,” UN-HABITAT, 2014, https://unhabitat.org/housing-landand-property -issues-in-lebanon-implications-of-the-syrian-refugee-crisis.
homeownership, however this percentage increased by around 30% in the later one 13 (Figure 5). At the same time the 1.5 million Syrian refugees since 2011 14, on top of existing economic constraints and almost half a century of Palestinian refugee presence 15, has triggered another surge of informal occupation. Lower-income Lebanese (and Palestinian) households, as well as Syrians and migrant workers, appear to be increasingly resorting to housing without ownership titles and without official or protected rental contracts, thus increasing their own vulnerability to eviction and prolonging tenure insecurity 16. They often face challenges related to inadequate, irregular, or substandard access to essential services such as water, electricity, and sanitation, as well as social amenities like education, healthcare, and cultural facilities.
Moreover, the cost of housing has skyrocketed in the past 20 years growing increasingly unaffordable over time (figure 6). Comparing the income to real estate prices from 2003 to 2020, highlights a widening gap between home prices in Beirut and the resident’s annual income, showing that Beirut become increasingly inaccessible for most of the residents seeking affordable housing, regardless of tenure type.
13 Samya Beidas-Strom, Weicheng Lian, and Ashwaq Maseeh, “The Housing Cycle in Emerging Middle Eastern Economies and Its Macroeconomic Policy Implications,” IMF eLibrary, December 1, 2009, https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2009/288/article-A001-en.xml.
14 UNHCR, “Lebanon at a Glance,” UNHCR Lebanon, 2023, https://www.unhcr.org/lb/at-aglance#:~:text=Lebanon%20remains%20a%20country%20hosting,11%2C238%20refugees%20of%20other%20nationalities.
15 The development of many informal housing settlements in Beirut are due to political, economic, ethnic and religious reasons. Because of a cholera epidemic in 1899, a new quarantine area was developed next to the Nahr Beirut river. Later on, during the First World War, the area developed into a town, housing 10,500 Armenians. The announcement of the state of Israel in May 1948 triggered a massive influx of Palestinian refugees to Beirut. In 2011, another influx of refugees arrived because of the outbreak of the Syrian civil war.
Ahmad M. Soliman, Diversity of Ethnicity and State Involvement on Urban Informality in Beirut, 2008, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23544786_DIVERSITY_OF_ETHNICITY_AND_STATE_INVOLVEMENT_ON_URBAN_INFORMALITY_IN_BEIRUT
16 Watfa Najdi, Yasmine Farhat, and Yara Mourad, “Hosting Refugees: The Impact of the Occupancy Free of Charge (OFC) Shelter Modality in Three Localities in Lebanon,” American University of Beirut, 2020, https://www.aub.edu.lb/ifi/Pages/publications/research_reports/2019-2020/20200309-hosting-refugees-ofc.aspx.
Figure 5: Homeownership (housing tenure) between 1970 and 2004
In Lebanon, as more generally in intermediate-income countries, owning real estate assets for speculative purposes goes far beyond their use value perceived as highly valuable for safe wealth accumulation in a country that lacks a social protection system. Pension and health plans only covered by the late 2010s 20% of Lebanese above 65 years old 17, (mostly public service employees), so homeownership is pursued by many as a goal of acquisition through fear of not being able to afford rent during retirement, or disappearing savings following bank collapses.
At the end of the 1970’s the government created two public credit institutions: the Housing Bank and the Caisse Autonome de l’Habitat, but large devaluations of the Lebanese Pound in late 1987 (nearly the end of the civil war) bankrupted them. During that period homeownership-oriented policies were directed towards the displaced populations. The CFD (Central Fund for Displaced) distributed more than 1.5 billion dollars to home acquirements, through a public-private partnership 18. Institutional reorganizations, such as those of the Housing Bank (privatization and recapitalization, 1994) and the Caisse Autonome de l’Habitat (which was replaced by the PCH, 2007), facilitated these processes 19. With the advent of a financial and property boom in the late-2000s, subsidization was applied to the entirety of commercial banks’ home credit proposals. As of 2018, following a decade of economic slowdown and financial instability, subsidization of mortgage programs stopped, causing the collapse of the whole country’s financial economy 20 .
17 International Labour Organization, “Au Liban, La Réforme Tant Attendue Des Retraites Est En Vue,” International Labour Organization, 2013, https://www.ilo.org/global/lang en/index.htm.
18 Reinoud Leenders, “Spoils of Truce: Corruption and State-Building in Postwar Lebanon ,” JSTOR, 2012, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.cttq438h.
19 Bruno Marot, “Pegged Urbanization and the (in)Stability of Lebanese Capitalism,” Executive Magazine, July 5, 2021, https://www.executive-magazine.com/specialreport/pegged-urbanization-and-the-instability-of-lebanese-capitalism.
20 Bruno Marot, “Pegged Urbanization and the (in)Stability of Lebanese Capitalism,” Executive Magazine, July 5, 2021, https://www.executive-magazine.com/specialreport/pegged-urbanization-and-the-instability-of-lebanese-capitalism.
High property prices and deposit requirements for home acquisition contributed to the fact that a significant portion of families turned toward the ‘rental market’, which, despite various transformations, has not seen any policy attention since the early 1990s 21 . Rent control was introduced in 1940 in Lebanon, it was extended through the independence, and it had one main intention: keep rentals below market rate, thus enable tenants to access affordable housing. Since the introduction of a new rental law in July 1992, two parallel rental systems have been in place. Tenancies entered into before that date are governed by price controls, while those entered upon the passing of the new law are governed by free leases 22 . However, considering that most low income households, and especially elderlies, depend now on rent, the rent control is the only available contradictory way for home acquisition in Beirut, where real estate speculation and gentrification dominates.
Like most first-generation rent regulation systems 23 around the world, Lebanon’s rent control was criticized because it ignored the living condition of the low income tenants and it transferred the burden of providing housing from the state to the private sector. Thus, the majority of those people live in deeply substandard conditions in the informal rental market, cut off from all forms of public support.
Through examining Lebanon's primary housing supply channels, we can realize that there is a gap in housing policy over the past three decades: while focusing on speculative, real- estate housing, the authorities forgot about the need to create safe and affordable housing for the less privileged. In doing so, the situation of millions of residents, particularly the urban poor, has increasingly worsened. Informal areas have also
21 Bruno Marot, “Pegged Urbanization and the (in)Stability of Lebanese Capitalism,” Executive Magazine, July 5, 2021, https://www.executive-magazine.com/specialreport/pegged-urbanization-and-the-instability-of-lebanese-capitalism.
22 Mona Fawaz and Dunia Salame, “The Need for Policies to Restore the Role of Land in the Making of a Livable City,” AUB, 2019, https://www.kas.de/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=8dc305dc-95f7-bdf7-3c29-85a18779c0d5&groupId=252038.
23 First-generation rent-regulation models mainly focused on keeping rents below market levels, while also providing security of tenure through generally allowing leasetransfer across generations. Second-generation rent-regulations models, on the other hand, focus on rent stabilisation, entailing caps on rental increases of new leases to a defined percentage that will be set above a local rental benchmark, while prohibiting tenants from transferring leases. Rent stabilisation systems are currently active in various European countries, with prominent examples being Germany and France. J Dahl and M Goralczyk, “Recent Supply and Demand Developments in the German Housing Market,” European Commission, 2017, https://commission.europa.eu/documents_en.
become a blank spot in public policy. The Lebanese authorities ignored the importance of creating a policy to upgrade the living conditions for informal settlements. Instead, pressure was on the humanitarian sector, represented by NGOs and international organizations 24 .
Thus, Lebanon's housing sector is facing severe challenges along with its financial crisis since 2019. The financing of housing supply has shifted towards short-term bank loans and equity investments (which were also stopped in 2020), hindering the production of affordable housing. Mortgage debt as well hasn't adequately addressed the needs of low-income households. The crisis has worsened these issues, leading to capital losses, reduced purchasing power, and rental market instability. So, one can say that the future of housing production remains uncertain, with the financial sector's paralysis expected to reshape housing finance dynamics.
Figure 7: speculative real estate (left) with low demand, Informal – illegal – affordable residences (right) with very high demand
Source: Google Images
Strategic Vision
A strategic plan for tackling housing issues in Lebanon will not work without considering the obstacles and opportunities in the market outlined above, along with recommendations for policy actions informed by lessons from past policy failures. This requires a shift away from seeing housing as a commodity or financial asset, to viewing it as a basic human right, as set out by international human rights law 25 .
1. HousingPolicyPriorities:
• regulate the real estate market,
• create diverse ways to finance and deliver housing,
• renovate the existing buildings, which are of low quality.
The assessment of the housing sector in the preceding section highlighted that the lack of transparency and rampant speculation in largely unregulated land and property markets has helped keep housing unaffordable. So one priority has to be ‘tighter regulation and organization of these markets’.
By referring to the UN-Habitat housing policies, in the short term, it is essential to develop a strategy to avoid a crash in land and real estate prices that would worsen the crisis. This requires a proactive policy to manage debt linked to housing construction, either through banks or directly linked to sales, or on credit (home loans), in addition to dealing with defaulted real estate or empty property. This implies adopting policy measures that protect homeowners so that the property market moves in a slightly progressive manner downwards 26 .
25 UN-Habitat, Housing Policies, Habitat III Policy Paper 10, 2016, https://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/Habitat-III-Policy-Paper -template.pdf.
26 UN-Habitat, Housing Policies, Habitat III Policy Paper 10, 2016, https://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/Habitat-III-Policy-Paper -template.pdf.
In the longer term, it is important to achieve transparency of real estate markets through improving data availability and ultimately set housing prices at an appropriate level consistent with general macroeconomic considerations.
The second recommended strategy is to create a ‘greater diversity of supply’ (a more varied range of standards and tenure types) to provide access to a range of housing options that combine market with non-market elements and use a hybrid set of value chains (public, private and community sectors).
One important first step is to reframe the mortgage system for home purchase. Measures should be taken to protect the residents and their various expectations and financial abilities. Specific legal, regulatory and financial systems should be designed to regulate homeowners’ rights and responsibilities in order to prevent the fast depreciation of newly built residential. Finally, cooperatives and community interventions, should be supported to make a tangible contribution to ‘urban commons’ 27 .
Making adequate housing available in urban areas requires revitalizing the formal rental market and formalizing the informal one, and creating a social housing rental system for all those who cannot afford home ownership – especially vulnerable population groups and the poor elderly who are also non-homeowners 28. The 2014 decision to cancel rent control was a missed opportunity to revitalize and open up the market and make it more inclusive. In the long term, mobilizing additional affordable rental housing supply locally through a range of small, medium and large private investors requires promoting partnerships (for example between investors and municipalities), and social rental housing programs. This requires financing and management models that are adapted to Lebanon’s particular institutional, financial and political context 29 .
27 ‘urban commons’ refers to common goods that can be shared among urbanites – such as land – and the rules that govern their use and management. These can be regulated by an urban community.
28 Bruno Marot, “Pegged Urbanization and the (in)Stability of Lebanese Capitalism,” Executive Magazine, July 5, 2021, https://www.executive-magazine.com/specialreport/pegged-urbanization-and-the-instability-of-lebanese-capitalism.
29 Bruno Marot, “Pegged Urbanization and the (in)Stability of Lebanese Capitalism,” Executive Magazine, July 5, 2021, https://www.executive-magazine.com/specialreport/pegged-urbanization-and-the-instability-of-lebanese-capitalism.
The third policy priority is the ‘mass renovation’ of substandard existing buildings in both urban and peri-urban areas (formal and informal).
In the past, there was a lack of efficient building management, and this has caused a rapid decline in the urban cores, especially in the areas where there was traditionally a controlled rental market, such as the down-towns of Tripoli, Beirut and Saida. All of the crisis that the government encountered should be seen as opportunities for mass and community-led revitalization strategies of the densely populated central. If those areas are not to be gentrified, focused strategies will have to be devised to allow possible rent hikes for new owners, yet to have rental contracts in place (by encouraging landlords to offer affordable housing and/or by limiting rent hikes during a specific period).
Renovation of existing housing is holistic and multi-pronged, including other aspects of urban development such as economic growth, mobility and environmental sustainability. Given the instability of existing buildings, ensuring structural robustness is an element of consideration that should be part of the renovation process, and should include steps to stabilize existing buildings. Lastly, the informality of settlements is to be corrected city-wide as part of comprehensive improvement programs that should include increased opportunities for housing quality, security and infrastructure improvement combined with new mobility options to better connect to the job markets and to urban amenities 30 .
30 UN-Habitat, Housing Policies, Habitat III Policy Paper 10, 2016, https://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/Habitat-III-Policy-Paper -template.pdf.
Such buildings can be seen as an opportunity for renovation and cooperative housing
Source: Google Images
Figure 8: Holiday Inn Abandoned Building in Beirut
2. MonitoringandEvaluation
Establishing a ‘monitoring strategy’ for housing policy requires adherence to three fundamental principles outlined in the Cape Town Global Action Plan for Sustainable Development Data, endorsed by the United Nations Statistical Commission 31: comprehensiveness, accountability, and collaboration. This would involve setting up a ‘national urban observatory’ responsible for data collection, data management, and data sharing, and initiating data-driven trend analysis to inform policy over time. A framework for statistics and geospatial data collection – including methodologies and performance benchmark for each set of indicators (eg, number of new homes borrowing from an NGO) – should be developed through participatory consultations with public, private, academic, and community stakeholders. Technical assistance is likely to be required from Lebanese authorities, as well as international and regional organizations or bilateral donors. While these strategies would need to be both tailored to Lebanon’s housing context as well as its policy ambitions, they could refer to other sets of performance indicators developed by the UN, international organizations, national governments, and NGOs. Examples include the strategies set within the UN’s SDGs, the Global Housing Indicators championed by Habitat for Humanity, the OECD’s Affordable Housing Database, and the IMF’s Global Housing Watch 32 .
Essentially, comprehensive ‘evaluation’ is required to test the impacts of policy actions on housing and urban conditions. It is a key step in optimizing the formulation and implementation of housing policies to ensure balanced and affordable development. It is also a fundamentally important tool in ensuring both transparency and credibility of local and national governments in front of Lebanese citizens and international funding agencies. Thus, implementing those strategies can pave the way towards a balanced and affordable urban development, enhancing residents' quality of life.
31 United Nations Statistical Commission, “Cape Town Global Action Plan for Sustainable Development Data,” Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, 2017, https://www.data4sdgs.org/resources/cape-town-global-action-plan-sustainable-development-data.
32 United Nations Statistical Commission, “Cape Town Global Action Plan for Sustainable Development Data,” Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, 2017, https://www.data4sdgs.org/resources/cape-town-global-action-plan-sustainable-development-data.
Conclusion
The UN World Happiness Report in 2021 declaring Lebanon to be the world’s second unhappiest country emphasizes the social crisis, the degradation of life and the travails for the vast majority in Lebanon, in which a housing crisis expresses more fundamental systemic concern
Current housing regulations in Lebanon face regulatory, institutional and program gaps, leading to a failed housing sector which fails to support the needs of the residents.
Embracing housing within the larger context of urbanism offers Lebanon the chance to tackle structural inequalities and pave the way towards a resilient urban future. This involves moving away from treating housing as a form of commodity, whether it’s for its speculative or investment value, or as a mere financial asset, and instead treating housing as a right, and an essential component of an inclusive city.
Lebanon’s housing agenda should follow major urban renewal programmers involving regulatory reforms, greater diversification of housing finance instruments, rehabilitation of substandard housing, enhancing market transparency and accountability, expanding access to affordable and sustainable housing options, and improving public infrastructures. At the core of this vision is a commitment to building strong monitoring and evaluation mechanisms that improve the evidence base which underpins policymaking and hold government accountable to the needs and voices of Lebanese citizens.
Nevertheless, these recommendations will only come to fruition if accompanied by strong data, political will, and an avoidance of institutional inertia and lack of resources. This roadmap can’t be achieved without the governmental and humanitarian sector (represented by NGOs) coming together. When government agencies, international organizations and local stakeholders collaborate to create balanced and affordable urbanization and provide equal access to services, the quality of life for all Lebanese, immigrants and refugees will improve.
Hence, Lebanon's housing crisis is a reflection of the multidimensionality of the crisis itself, and should have a multi-scalar approach in order to be resolved. It serves as a microcosm of broader systemic issues, highlighting the urgent need for comprehensive urban reforms that prioritize housing as a fundamental human right and a basic need for inclusive urban development.
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