Um Hassan's New House

The Costs of Staying in the City

Um Hassan moved to Tarik Al Jadidah in 1982, when she was an 18-year-old mother of two. She came from the south and married a relative who was living in Beirut. Em Hassan is now in her 50s and lives in the same neighborhood in Tarik Al Jadidah, but in a new house after being evicted from her previous house three years ago. Between her old house and her new one is a small open space, sheltered from the sun and rain by a cloth awning no larger than 2 meters per side. This open space represents the past, present, and future of Um Hassan's housing. You can find her there every afternoon, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. To her right is a window of the house she lived in for 34 years, which is no longer hers. Directly in front of her is the door to a house that, by purchasing it, offered her a chance to stay in Beirut. During a series of chats in this space, we come to know Um Hassan's story and the neighborhood's residents' struggles to stay here in the face of real estate pressures.

How they came to live in the city

The importance of the interwoven social fabric in old neighborhoods

Abu Hassan

Abu Hassan is in his 60s and lives in the Tarik Al Jadidah area. In 1978, he married his relative from the south, Um Hassan. He was a civil servant in Beirut Municipality and worked in Abu Shaker Square. Everyone in the area around Abu Shaker knows him as Abu Hassan Abdullah. When he got married, he and his wife lived in his family's home in Al-Nuwairi because it was all he could afford. For four years, his relationships with his brothers at home were tense. He would complain about it to Abi Omar, one of his friends at the Municipality who lived in a neighborhood near Abu Shaker. Abi Omar told him about a small apartment for rent that he knew about in the neighborhood and advised him to move out of his family's house and rent the apartment so he could get away from the problems at home. So that's what he did. Abu Hassan, his wife, and their two children moved to a house on Zreik Hill in Tarik Al Jadidah in early 1982, among neighbors they came to know and like.

The Old House

The Saadi building is located in an old neighborhood on Zreik Hill that began attracting development in the 1930s. The neighborhood formed in stages and became densely built thanks to consecutive construction booms in Tarik Al Jadidah starting in the 1940s.[1] Unlike several of the older buildings surrounding it, the Saadi building was not constructed as a family home intended to expand over time. It was built as a commercial investment during a period when Tarik Al Jadidah was attracting families coming from the south and the Iklim region. The building consisted of three floors and 12 apartments until two apartments were added early in the Civil War. Um Hassan and her family lived in one of those two apartments since coming to the neighborhood in 1982. Um Hassan moved to Tarik Al Jadidah when the Lebanese currency was undergoing severe inflation. She paid 400 Lebanese pounds to rent the smallest apartment, which was no more than 35 square meters, when the oldest neighbor in the biggest apartment was paying 15 pounds.[2] The country later enacted a rent-control law [3], and the rent gradually decreased to 20 pounds. They were a family of four, which became five after Em Hassan gave birth to their younger daughter, Salwa. Um Hassan's apartment consisted of one bedroom and its amenities. In addition, the entrance to the house accommodated only a single sofa, so Um Hassan found herself spending time in a small open space near her house. She exits through the wooden door to the house onto a narrow alley no more than 1 meter wide. Going left, she finds herself in the open space, which is nothing more than a corner beside the street, where the Saadi building meets another, abandoned house.

The New House

That house wasn't always abandoned. It's an old, small house that makes up part of the Hamad family's four adjacent homes. It has a small bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom, and the family lived there until the 1970s, then left when their children grew up and they moved to a home further away. During the war, the house's owner added a room to the building, just like his neighbors who owned the Saadi building, and he converted it into a sawmill where he spent his time. When Um Hassan moved to her apartment in the Saadi building in Tarik Al Jadidah with her two children in 1982, the small, rectangular open space in front of the door to the sawmill was the same space where Um Hassan would come to spend her time and where her children would play. The house's owner was elderly and friendly with Um Hassan and her children. He had promised Um Hassan to sell her his house someday, but he died before that happened. In Summer 2006[4], Um Hassan's daughter Salwa was displaced from southern Dahieh, along with her husband and their daughter. Um Hassan's family, her mother and siblings, also fled. All of them ultimately ended up in Tarik Al Jadidah. Um Hassan's mother and siblings stayed in her apartment and the adjacent vacant apartment in the Saadi building. As for Salwa and her husband, they rented the house of Um Hassan's elderly neighbor, which had been empty since the family moved to another of Beirut's neighborhoods. They stayed there and didn't return to their home in Dahieh after reconstruction. Some years after Salwa settled in the house, the owner's son informed Um Hassan that he intended to sell the house. He offered it to her to buy; otherwise, he would sell it to someone else. Um Hassan didn't have the money to buy a house, but she couldn't accept it being sold to someone else, so she gave him a small down payment in anticipation of cobbling together the full amount. That wouldn't happen for six years, when an investor arrived to buy the Saadi building and offered her $20,000 in eviction compensation.

[1] Rapid Social Research: Beirut and Its Suburbs, 2005, Council for Development and Reconstructiont

[2] 1994 Law Extending Lease Contracts and Setting Remuneration

[3] 1982 Law Lease Provisions

[4] During the Israeli aggression on Lebanon

Financing the new house

Um Yumna

Um Yumna is in her eighties and used to live in the neighborhood. She moved to Beirut at 14 years old, when she got married. She and her family were among the 12 families that lived in the same building as Wedad and her siblings. When the inheritors of the building decided to demolish it in 2012 to construct a modern building, Um Yumna went to court in a five-year trial to obtain eviction compensation. Um Yumna's family had no option for staying in Beirut. Her children proposed to the investor that they buy an apartment in the new building, but the answer they received was a definitive rejection, with no reason given. They went to some real estate offices to search for an apartment in the same area, but the price of apartments there, after the Israeli invasion in 2006, was nearly $250,000. Um Yumna's family had decided years earlier, before the sale and eviction, to buy a house in the village of Barja in the Iklim region, and rather than take out loans to buy an apartment in Beirut, they found it a better investment to renovate the house in Barja and move there.

It was a surprise when the investor visited Um Hassan's house for the first time, as none of the residents knew that the building had been sold. But it wasn't the first time they had been asked to vacate the house. It was preceded by other investors’ attempts to buy the building, which prompted the property-owners to file evictions. Perhaps it was the sensitivity of her housing situation that compelled Um Hassan to pay a down payment on her elderly neighbor's house years before she had the money to buy it. What's certain is that the eviction compensation was her only means to get enough money to fulfill the agreement between her and her neighbor's son, who insisted on keeping the agreement with her. Thus, when the investor came to her offering money in exchange for her and her family vacating the home, she haggled for more so that she would be able to buy and renovate the neighboring house, where her daughter Salwa was living with her family during that period. During the negotiations with the investor, she borrowed some money from her brother to cover the large part of the new house’s cost. After buying it, Um Hassan needed a small amount of money, which she borrowed from a politically-religiously affiliated lending organization. She accessed the loan through her relatives and their social relations in the Dahieh area. She used the money to renovate the room that had been used as a carpentry workshop, turning it into a grocery shop for Abu Hassan.

A neighborhood's reality and stories of staying

Strategies of vulnerable residents to fight displacement from the city

Wedad

Wedad is a neighbor of Um Hassan's. She is one of the inheritors of a building in the same neighborhood.

Wedad's family has lived in the neighborhood near Abu Shaker Square since her father came to the neighborhood in the 1930s and built a house there. It was one of the first houses built on Zreik Hill. As residents flocked to the area, the family started to add rooms and then floors to the house, dividing the expansions into small apartments and renting them to families coming from the south and the Iklim region. Between tenants and the owner's inheritors, 12 families lived in Wedad's family house. By the post-war period, the building was in poor condition, and neither the inheritors nor the tenants could maintain or restore it. The number of inheritors and their families increased, and renting the building no longer brought significant income for them. The construction boom during the reconstruction period, and the investors preying on old, broken down properties offered the heirs an opportunity to improve their housing situation. They carried out formal inheritance procedures in preparation for real estate investment, but that didn't occur until 2015 when they made an agreement with a company developing several projects in the area. Today a modern, 11-floor building stands on the site of old house. The inheritors share ownership of the property, and Wedad lives there in an apartment with one of her brothers, while the previous tenants are scattered across other areas inside and outside Beirut.

The Saadi building is located in a neighborhood formed prior to the 1960s. Most of its old buildings are still standing today, but are threatened by successive increases in building allowances [5], which have created a fertile environment for attracting investors. This reality is evident in the neighborhood, the features of which have begun to change in recent years. In 2012, the building that Wedad and her siblings inherited was demolished, and they built a yellow, 11-floor commercial building in its place in partnership with an investor from the area. Opposite is a new building that is still under construction, and behind the Saadi building is another building constructed in 2015, on the site of an older building, built by another company that was the very one that purchased the Saadi building in 2011

Um Hassan moved to her new house, which wasn't far away. "From door to door." She didn't feel that her life had changed after the move. Her life is as it was, including the open space in front of the house. The space is still as it was, and Um Hassan and Abu Hassan still meet there. Their three children are grown, and they now have two grandchildren. She is still here, hanging out the washed clothes, preparing meals, watching her grandchildren while they play. Here she scolds the municipal worker who did not sweep the alley as he should, and here she still meets her neighbors every afternoon to drink coffee and talk about their daily adventures at work and at home. "Here I feel that I'm still inside." In the open space, Um Hassan does not feel that her life has changed, although it really has. Abu Hassan's friend Abu Omar and Hajja Um Omar both died some time ago, and five neighbors in the Saadi building took the compensation from the investor and left. Laila, Husna, and Hajja Mahasen have left the neighborhood since the 1990s, and today two nine-story buildings stand on the site of their ramshackle yellow houses. There's no open space in front of those buildings like the one next to Um Hassan's house, only a parking garage. When asked about her social life in the neighborhood, Um Hassan answers "here", either in the open space or at her neighbor Hala's home in the Saadi building, but on Sundays she goes to visit her relatives in Dahieh. Abu Hassan heads more often to his village in the south. In 1993, Abu Hassan submitted his resignation from his job at the municipality, expecting a large compensation. What Abu Hassan regrets most today is leaving his job with the municipality. He got only a small amount of money, and the family was left without income. In addition to the lack of financial stability that resulted, he found that his social life disappeared with all the changes in the neighborhood. So, in 2005, he decided to replace the carpentry workshop of the house next door, which they later bought, with a grocery shop.

[5] Since 1971, the maximum height restrictions have been eliminated, and maximum height is now calculated at 2x the width of the parallel street. According to the Building Code adopted in 2004, the maximum height shall be calculated at 2.5x the width of the road, and the investment rate is calculated according to the size of the property.

Hala

Hala is Um Hassan's neighbor in the Saadi building. A middle-aged woman, she works in the hospitality sector. She and her older sister, both of whom are unmarried, live in one of the apartments in the Saadi building following the death of their father.

"When he came, he immediately said that he wanted to give me $25,000," Hala says, talking about the investor who bought the building. "I didn't accept. My mother and father were there, and we said no. He came back again and said he would give us $43,000, so we said OK. My father had hemiplegia, and my mother was wasting away. He said he needed a legal doctor's statement that my father had full mental competence. We brought it to them and went and got a power of attorney for my brother so we could work with him. Suddenly my father died. So it came down to my mother. We went and got a doctor's statement for my mother, like the one we'd gotten for my father. He went to talk to my brother and told him he would give $25,000 now, just give him the key and he would pay the rest. My brother told him we wanted to register the transaction with the notary public, and he refused, so my brother called it off. Then they came and took measurements of the house for the court and sued us some time later. We told him that we would accept the court's decision. We went to our neighbor -- he died a while back -- and we told him what had happened. He said we're in this together. Four houses, we hired one lawyer."

In 2011, a real estate investment company bought the Saadi building. This was the third time since the 1990s that an investor tried to buy the building. Um Hassan's apartment consisted of one bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom. After negotiations, Um Hassan agreed with the investor, one of the company's owners, on a price of $20,000, with the condition that she would be given a year to vacate the house. Um Hassan knew that she would not get anything better if she decided to go to court. As a result, she received the first $10,000 with a document certified by the notary public. Ten months later, she left the house and received the rest of the money. Um Hassan's house was the smallest in the Saadi building. "Why should he give me $20,000? My house isn't worth it, and the court wouldn't give me what he gave me. It's the Lord's will... The man's intentions were clear to me." As for her neighbors in the larger apartments, they did not accept the relatively small amounts of money that the investor offered them. They demanded payments proportionate to the sizes of their apartments. Some of them reached agreements with him for up to $45,000 to leave their homes, while others declined and went to court.

Hala’s sister says: "Now it is us and them in the courts. Four neighbors with one attorney, and the rest didn't want to do it. It's been two years. Every three months, they postpone the case. There was a hearing yesterday, and they postponed it to next month."[6]

This situation makes the residents' status unstable. They know that they have no choice but to leave the house, but when, how, and to where are the questions that leave them unable to make any radical decisions right now. They are unwilling to move from the house until they obtain the full compensation, because they fear that the investor will not follow through on making the remaining payment after they vacate the house. In addition, their choices for a future home will strongly depend on the value of the compensation they receive. The investor paid $550,000 to buy the building from its inheritors, most of whom have died. Moreover, the tenants estimate that the future building will be large relative to the size of the property, and the main road will lead to Barbeer if it's completed, thus giving the building additional advantages. This means that the apartments will be much more expensive than in the building behind them. From this standpoint, the residents feel that the amounts of money offered to them are not fair, especially given that the investor will recover the money upon selling his apartments, while for them, the money will be their only means of securing another place to live.

[6] The delays originate in the connection between the tenants' case and the new Old Leases Law (2014), which was amended in 2017. The law keeps those tenants' cases pending in the courts because the Assessment Committee and the Tenants' Fund have not been formed yet.* Reference (Miriam Mahna from a legal note).

"We're not farmers"

The city's importance in providing livelihood

Nadia

Nadia is a woman in her 50s who was born, grew up, got married, and raised her 4 children in Sabra. Nadia’s family came to Beirut from Turkey in 1960. Years later, she married one of the sons of her family’s landlord. After her marriage, she moved to Chatila, a neighborhood adjacent to Sabra. Today, after her husband's death, Nadia has returned to the house where she was born, but this time she is not a tenant: she and her children have inherited her deceased husband’s shares in the property, and were offered the house by her in-laws. It is a very modest house with one bedroom and its amenities and is part of a building that Nadia co-inherited with her husband's siblings and their inheritors. A few months ago, the inheritors entered into negotiations with an investor who expressed his interest in buying the property. Nadia doesn't want to sell her house because her financial position wouldn't allow her to find an alternative. But rather than refusing to sell, she's content to hope that the investor does not return to complete the negotiations. Although she lives in the property, and would be most impacted by the sale, this does not give her any practical means to oppose the sale.

But what if she refuses to sign off on the sale? If she refuses, the other inheritors could use legal measures to force her into selling her shares.

Many of Um Hassan's neighbors in the house and the neighborhood are leaving their homes, including Hajja Mahasen, who moved in with one of her sons in the Sports City area, and Um Yumna, who left Beirut for Barja. Um Hassan, like many of the families of Tarik Al Jadidah, inherited land and a portion of a house from her family outside of Beirut, in the South. But moving to the South wasn't an option for her. "We can't live in the south. We're not farmers. My son drives a taxi. What is he supposed to do in the south?" The family is composed of the two elderly parents and their two unmarried children. The family’s income depends on the only son, Hassan, who rents his uncle’s car to work as a taxi driver. The family's livelihood is thus fundamentally linked to their presence in the city, which provides the density required to operate a taxi as a main source of income. This dilapidated house, a part of which is located on land planned for a public road, ensures that the family can stay in the city and continue to sustain itself. But Um Hassan's family isn't the only one that has encountered a sense of stability, even if only temporarily, in substandard housing conditions. Um Hassan's former home in the Saadi building provides shelter for a family of seven displaced from Syria, and they're not the only ones. All of the apartments in the Saadi building whose residents were evicted now house Syrian families of six or seven people. Although the building will be demolished when all the old tenants are evicted, the displaced families have found safe haven in a precarious situation, enabling them to stay in the city near employment opportunities. Their presence in the building does not hinder the investor's efforts to demolish it, as evicting these families will be quicker and less complicated than evicting the old Lebanese tenants.

And so, while Um Hassan has remained in the neighborhood, it is the world around her that has changed. When she was a tenant, Um Hassan's ability to stay in the city was under constant threat by the inevitability of eviction. Today, as an owner, her presence still is not guaranteed. Um Hassan knows that the old, worn-down house that she bought is vulnerable because it could be swept away at any moment by the road planned nearby. In addition, Um Hassan's house is part of a larger property in which she has bought only a few shares. In counterpart, the remaining shares are owned by a number of inheritors. If they decide to sell it, she would find herself in the same dilemma. Like Nadia, Um Hassan and her family would have little say in the decision-making. The future of her housing situation would again be ruled by the compensation she would receive for her shares. Thus, the only sure thing that can be said about Um Hassan's future is that the Saadi building will be demolished, and her house will be adjacent to the new building's parking garage. Hala and her other neighbors will leave the neighborhood, and the open space would ultimately disappear. What are Um Hassan's chances of staying in the neighborhood now? And is her ownership of a piece of the property really a guarantee that she can stay?

Originally published in Arabic on the Housing Monitor.