Deir-ez-Zor Housing Crisis Worsens Amid Lack of Reconstruction

More than a year after the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, the city of Deir-ez-Zor continues to suffer from a structural housing crisis due to extensive wartime destruction, without any serious or clear steps by the transitional administration towards rebuilding the destroyed areas. This crisis comes amid existing population pressure within the city, which has intensified with the return of large numbers of residents since the end of 2024.

In 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) gradually took control of most neighbourhoods of Deir-ez-Zor, following a broad military campaign it launched against armed opposition factions. At the same time, ISIS tightened its siege on Assad regime forces in the neighbourhoods of Al-Joura and Al-Qusour between 2014 and 2017, before the Syrian army, with Russian support, launched a military operation regaining control of the city by November 2017. These military operations caused widespread destruction affecting to varying degrees 22 out of the city’s 24 neighbourhoods.

From the fall of the Assad regime at the end of 2024 to the end of 2025, the city of Deir-ez-Zor has witnessed the return of around 150,000 people, including 75,000 who returned from camps in northern Syria. According to the same estimates, around 200,000 people displaced from Deir-ez-Zor have not yet returned to the city, whose population was approximately 600,000 before 2011, while its current population stands at about 400,000.

In reality, only the neighbourhoods of Al-Joura and Al-Qusour escaped damage. They are now inhabited by around 250,000 people, more than half of the city’s population. By contrast, around 150,000 people are distributed across the other partially damaged neighbourhoods, despite limited services and a lack of adequate infrastructure. This distribution reflects an urban imbalance imposed by years of destruction, siege, and fighting. Al-Joura and Al-Qusour have become almost the only residential refuge within a city largely in ruins, leading to heavy pressure on water, electricity, and sewage networks, in addition to worsening overcrowding and rising rental costs compared with other neighbourhoods.

Deir-ez-Zor mayor Majed Hattab told The Syria Report that 80 percent of the city is destroyed, though the levels of destruction  vary from one neighbourhood to another. Mr Hattab said they did not have precise figures on the number of damaged or structurally unsafe houses due  to the loss of most municipal records during the years of war. This hinders the preparation of a clear database that could be relied upon to assess the reality of housing damage.

Mr Hattab said that current efforts are focused on removing rubble to relieve population pressure on Al-Joura and Al-Qusour. The city council is also cooperating with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to remove around 75,000 tonnes of rubble from five neighbourhoods: Al-Rashidiya, Al-Khasarat, Sheikh Yassin, Al-Huweiqa, and Al-Hamidiya, in an attempt prepare these areas for repair works. This comes as infrastructure in Al-Joura and Al-Qusour are still deteriorating, due to the high population density.

The housing crisis inside the city might be compounded by the displacements that have followed the recent take-over by the Syrian transitional government forces of parts in the northeast – among them the eastern countryside of Deir-ez-Zor governorate –  territory previously under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).  Mr Hattab warned that any increase in return movements by displaced residents who had fled to Al-Jazira, i.e. the northern part of Syria’s eastern regions, during the years of war could add further pressure to an already strained housing situation inside the city.

A property expert from Deir-ez-Zor, who requested anonymity because of his work with an international organisation, explained that damaged housing in the city can be divided into three categories according to the nature of the damage. The first category includes houses whose internal fittings were looted without damage to the structural framework, constituting around 60 per cent of the total damaged housing. These are repairable. The second category includes houses that suffered structural damage but remain repairable, constituting between 10 and 15 per cent, although their rehabilitation will be costly. The third category includes houses that are completely destroyed and cannot be repaired, requiring full reconstruction. These constitute around 25 per cent of the total damaged housing in the city.

The expert noted that the role of international organisations currently working in Deir-ez-Zor is limited to helping rehabilitate repairable housing, which makes the scope of their intervention small and not commensurate with the scale of existing destruction. He added that the nature of these interventions remains linked to funding ceilings set by donor countries, despite the presence of six United Nations organisations and around 20 international organisations, in addition to dozens of local associations.

Property expert Walid Haj Ali told The Syria Report that the absence of any clear mechanism for surveying damage at the city level in Deir-ez-Zor means that reliable figures on the number of damaged houses are not available. He said this reflects a lack of basic practical steps in dealing with the reconstruction file, noting that no official, locally adopted damage survey has been carried out so far that could be used as a reference for reconstruction planning. Haj Ali expressed surprise that the transitional administration has not undertaken such a survey to date, stressing that any reconstruction process requires, as a first step, a precise assessment of the existing situation and a clear determination of the scale of damage before moving to address it, which has not yet been achieved in the case of Deir-ez-Zor.