Between Homelessness and the Right to Housing
Professor Michel Abs
The Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC)
Recently, incidents of residential building collapses have increased in northern Lebanon, prompting the state to evacuate many buildings in the city and relocate residents to shelters. The churches in Tripoli were the first to place their buildings at the disposal of the state and the displaced.
This incident may seem exceptional or temporary, but in truth it is merely a model of the housing problems in our region—not only in Lebanon, but in the world.
The need for housing is a primary human need, because the home is a person’s fundamental refuge, where one returns after a strenuous day of work to rest from the fatigue of the day, meet with family, or withdraw in solitude and go to sleep in preparation for another day of work and productivity.
The home is the place where the heart finds rest—after the homeland; indeed, it is one’s small homeland. It determines a person’s physical and psychological health, social relationships, and partly the academic success of children.
Imagine that the place providing all this does not exist.
Imagine people living in unhealthy homes, in unhealthy neighborhoods, in a contaminated environment, noisy and polluted, without proper access to water, electricity, or the various services necessary for human well-being and development.
These homes, which were deemed dangerous and at risk of collapse due to heavy winter rains, did not become so overnight. They are homes of a repulsive standard unfit for a human being of the twenty-first century.
They are houses with frail structures, insufficient size, and deplorable services. They are homes inhabited with the humiliating feeling of impermanence, with the suffering of misery and settling for the bare minimum, as if they were tents of concrete, sheltering families and sparing them the evil of homelessness, sidewalk dwelling, or tents of humiliation. It is the condition of a person who “no longer has a refuge in the neighborhood,” as the popular saying goes.
They are homes that do not provide even the minimum requirements, whether from a health standpoint or from a psychological and social one, where the family cannot live a healthy social life and its members do not enjoy the privacy necessary for every human being.
The right to decent, dignified housing—not temporary shelter—is a natural right for every human being, beyond dispute. Yet, unfortunately, we find that this right is not secured, especially in our countries.
When buildings collapse on their inhabitants and families find themselves in the streets searching for shelter, this is the height of neglect that leads to humiliation. This is not something that emerged suddenly; rather, it is the result of a massive accumulation of neglect, ignoring the issue and overlooking the crisis.
Some say that the state has a fundamental role in solving this dilemma, because the cost of housing exceeds the incomes of many newly formed or poor families. However, in the absence of an integrated housing plan from the public sector, the Church—and religious bodies in general—must intervene to resolve this long-standing crisis.
Religious institutions possess a vast amount of real estate that enables them to form a solution to the crisis of decent housing. If that is not the case, then there is a problem reaching the depth of these institutions’ vision and planning logic. When resources are available, the need is evident before us, and yet there is no solution, then the core of the problem lies in coordinating the investment of these resources.
The Church has carried out several housing projects—so why are they not repeated? Why did the Church stop pursuing its housing projects? Were these projects evaluated and lessons drawn from them in order to continue, or to find a different formula from the one adopted in the first phase?
In Christian doctrine, welcoming the stranger is considered an act at the heart of faith, as it is written in the Holy Bible, “I was a stranger and you took me in,” and “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” What then if those burdened with heavy loads are not strangers?
The poor distribution of income and wealth in our countries is the primary cause of the poverty people live in. Decent housing constitutes the first element in building a family and is the cornerstone of a dignified life. So how can we deprive a person of this right in the age of human rights?