Throughout the first two months of year 2021, 88 cases have been reported, relating to housing vulnerability affecting 237 individuals, almost half of which were children. These reports included 36 single women threatened with eviction along with their children. The reports covered 12 different nationalities living in the city and sharing the worry of rent expenses.
Rent payments seem to have become a burden on the majority of the reporting groups, as half of them have been unable to pay the current rent expenses. The other half is already afflicted by the accumulating rent expenses from previous months, the maximum of which reached 6 million liras.
The value of the rents of cases reporting an inability to pay ranges between 300 thousand and one million Lebanese liras, amongst which four cases are reported from the Port explosion affected neighborhoods, and two cases of evacuations.
14% of the reported cases live in the affected neighborhoods, where the issue of reconstruction is the main factor creating a risk of eviction, either as a result of the postponement in carrying out the necessary rehabilitation work to ensure their return or as a result of their replacement with new tenants after the restoration of their houses, in order to increase the value of the rent.
In addition, the authorities must, in the current situation, encourage putting out apartments for rent at low prices instead of keeping them vacant, which requires setting taxes on vacant apartments and directing budgets for the rehabilitation of apartments in order to increase the social housing stock.
