Unable to afford rent, Syrians in Arsal on a ‘waiting list’ to move into tents

ARSAL ­– On a clear spring morning, as the last snows melted off the peaks encircling Arsal, in northern Lebanon, Saleh Abdulwahed carried a brick and placed it delicately on the ground. “This will be the corridor, and here we will have two rooms,” the 52-year-old Syrian refugee explained while his sons added water to a mortar mixture.  

Since the Abdulwahed family fled their hometown in Qalamoun in 2013, they have lived in several apartments in Arsal. But after nine years of displacement, they can no longer afford rent and are moving for the first time to a tent in an informal settlement.

They are among 500 Syrian families that have requested a permit from Arsal’s municipality to downgrade from a house or apartment to a tent in the past year. A crushing economic crisis in Lebanon since 2019 has driven nine out of ten Syrian refugees into extreme poverty.

Saleh, his wife and their eight children are moving into a tent that, in accordance with Lebanese authorities’ rules, is made of non-permanent materials like wood and plastic, with brick walls less than a meter tall (except for the bathroom). “In ten days, we will be living here,” Saleh said, standing in the middle of the unfinished tent’s wooden skeleton.

 In Syria, Saleh used to work in commerce, but in Lebanon he has struggled to find work. “We are moving from a house to a tent just to be able to live,” he said. “I can’t pay rent anymore and UNHCR aid is not enough.” 

Their monthly rent for their apartment was 1 million LBP ($34 at the current parallel exchange rate), while the combined rent for the two tents the eight members of this family will occupy is 400,000 LBP ($13). “In the houses you have to pay for all the expenses, while at the camp, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) helped us with the wood and other NGOs will support us,” Saleh explained. NRC has provided 150 families with tent-building materials in the last year.   

Plastic and wooden tents leave refugees vulnerable to Arsal’s harsh winters, but Saleh seemed optimistic. “In the tents in the camps, the winter is warmer than in the houses.” A neighbor who had been watching the family build their tent jumped in, saying: “It’s not like that, believe me, here it was very cold.” Saleh took a moment. “I don’t know—I have never been in a camp, it’s my first time,” he conceded.

“I wish I could go back to the building where I lived in Syria,” he added. The family cannot return to Syria because three of their older sons would face military conscription.

Half of the two dozen tents in this informal settlement are new. Iman Daimis’ tent neighbors the one Saleh is building. “We decided to move to a camp when we weren’t able to pay rent for several months,” Iman, originally from Idlib, explained. “The first time we came to the tent it was very difficult, we still haven’t gotten used to it.”

This informal settlement in Arsal has expanded to accommodate Syrian families that can no longer afford rent, 13/5/2022 (A. Medina, Syria Direct)

Iman, her husband, their three children and her mother-in-law moved into a tent last winter. The income of her husband, who works intermittently in a quarry, and UNHCR monthly assistance was not enough to cover their $50 rent. Now they pay 200,000 LBP ($6.60) for a tent. “We get electricity from a solar panel, and the UN provides water,” she explained. 

In 2021, 21 percent of Syrian households in Lebanon that relocated did so due to eviction. The number of Syrians under eviction notice has grown steadily from 2.7 percent in 2018 to 3.7 percent in 2019, and from 4.9 percent in 2020 to 5.4 percent in 2021, according to UN figures. 

Sunlight filtered through holes in the tarp roof of Iman’s tent. “Two days ago, it rained a lot, and we were scared, water came in through the corners,” she said. Without enough insulation,  “the kids were crying from the cold this winter,” she added. 

The logistics of shelter downgrading 

Iman and Saleh’s families spent four and two months respectively waiting for Lebanese authorities’ approval for them to relocate to a tent. To move to a tent, Syrians must get the landowner’s approval and then request a permit from the Arsal municipality. 

“They present their case proving they can’t pay rent in their apartment and they want to build a tent in a camp, then the municipality does a checkup to corroborate their case,” Ruwaida Fleety, from the Emergency Response Unit in NRC Arsal explained. The municipality refers the file to the intelligence services for security approval, and finally organizations such as the NRC provide materials to build a tent. 

“Those who had low rents have seen their rent increase, and those who weren’t asked to pay rent now have to pay,” explained Fleety.

In December 2021, the Lebanon’s Interior Ministry forbade the expansion of camps in Arsal, “but given the circumstances, in February 2022, they issued an exception [in Arsal] allowing people to set up a tent,” Fleety said. 

Arsal is located in the Baalbek-Hermel governorate, which hosts some 340,000 Syrian refugees, 53 percent of whom live in non-permanent shelters compared to 22 percent across the country. As of 2021, 57 percent of Syrian households live in shelters below humanitarian standards. The following graph shows a steady decrease of Syrians living in residential structures (houses), while the percentage of  non-permanent shelters (tents) has increased over the years, although the impact of Arsal’s recent trend is not yet reflected.