Housing in Syria: A Chronic Crisis Exacerbated by War
Executive Summary:
This report traces the chronology of the housing crisis in Syria, which began decades ago as a result of governmental neglect, the absence of effective planning, outdated legislation, and institutions burdened by suffocating bureaucracy. The crisis was further intensified by successive waves of displacement, including refugees from the occupied Golan and internal migration from rural areas to major cities. Following its seizure of power, the Baath Party actively encouraged such migration—particularly from its popular support bases toward large urban centers—without adopting corresponding urban expansion plans. This resulted in the widespread growth of informal settlements and a deepening of the housing shortage across the country.
With the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011, the Assad regime waged a large-scale war against the Syrian people, deliberately targeting Syrian cities with destructive weapons, demolishing vast urban areas, and forcibly displacing residents to internal displacement camps or to neighboring and distant countries of asylum. The regime also enacted numerous laws enabling it to confiscate homes and lands owned by opponents, and pursued demographic engineering by settling loyalists and giving citizenships to the foreign fighters who supported it and housing them in areas from which original inhabitants had been expelled.
After the fall of the Assad regime, the housing crisis re-emerged in all its complexity. Many returning Syrians confronted a harsh reality: an inability to prove ownership of their homes, a severe shortage of rental housing due to limited supply and surging demand accompanied by runaway price inflation, and, in many cases, the discovery that their houses had been reduced to rubble and were no longer habitable. Amid this complex landscape and acute resource constraints, the reconstruction process remains suspended before it has meaningfully begun and without a clear horizon. This situation has driven some individuals to rehabilitate their homes in an informal and unregulated manner, without adherence to building codes and legal standards, potentially opening the door to new problems that may further complicate the housing crisis.
The report highlights models that can be drawn upon in this context. Most notably, Turkey’s experience following the 2023 earthquake demonstrates the use of engineering designs that reduce construction costs and time, combined with cooperation with the private sector, enabling the rapid construction of a large proportion of the housing units promised to those affected. The report also reviews Vietnam’s experience with social housing, where a dedicated social housing fund was established to finance projects targeting low-income groups, aiming to balance supply and demand in the housing market, and where ambitious housing targets were exceeded within a relatively short period.
The report offers a set of recommendations addressed to the Syrian government and civil society organizations, foremost among them the development of a comprehensive reconstruction plan; the establishment of clear standards and regulations for newly constructed and rehabilitated buildings; coordination with international actors to relocate refugees from camps into caravans or prefabricated housing units until permanent homes are built; and the adoption of rapid-construction technologies from leading countries in this field.
To read the full report click here (Arabic)
بكالوريوس في قسم الفلك وعلوم الفضاء من جامعة أنقرة، مهتم بالشأن التركي وعلاقته بقضايا اللاجئين السوريين، ونشر وشارك في إعداد عدد من التقارير والمقالات حول هذا الموضوع ضمن الوحدة المجتمعية في مركز الحوار السوري
