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Government Raises Prices of Alternative Housing in Marota City

24-01-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

The state-owned General Housing Establishment (GHE), which is supposed to provide affordable housing to the population, has once again raised the estimated prices for alternative housing units in the Marota City project. It also requested those eligible for the units to pay 30 percent of this new value now.

Marota City is one of two newly zoned real estate areas established in the city of Damascus under Legislative Decree No. 66 of 2012. Marota is located southeast of the Mazzeh district, while the second, Basilia City, is located south of the southern ring highway. The Damascus governorate manages these two areas through its Directorate for Implementation of Decree No. 66. Damascus Cham Holding company was established to develop the area.

Some of the former homeowners in Marota are entitled to alternative housing, one of several social housing schemes implemented by the GHE. Homeowners in informally built neighbourhoods may apply to receive alternative accommodation should they lose their homes to expropriation, demolition or rezoning. Under Decree No. 66, the people entitled to such housing include those who built their houses on state-owned land or those who built on agricultural land within an area subject to the decree. In practice, however, those built on state land were excluded from alternative housing in Marota City for unclear reasons. Only those who built on agricultural land were not allowed to build on it were entitled to the measure.

Alternative housing is not provided free of charge, though. Applicants must pay for it in interest-bearing instalments based on the estimated construction cost. Today there are 5,500 applicants entitled to alternative housing in Marota City, with 48 apartment blocks allocated to them. However, alternative housing meant for Marota City was transferred to the Basilia City area, in violation of Decree No. 66 and without official justification. Basilia City is farther from the Damascus city centre and has lower real estate values than Marota City.

The GHE announced on November 28, 2022, that it had allocated 522 alternative housing units to applicants in Marota City. It invited applicants who were granted priority to attend allocation sessions in December to choose their units. Those sessions were later postponed to January 2023 due to the long break imposed by the Council of Ministers at the end of last year due to the fuel crisis.

In these sessions, applicants may choose according to their preference which housing units they would like within the alternative housing project, so long as they fit within the allotted total surface area. Through this allocation process, the applicant enters into a contract with the GHE. However, the allocation contract does not include a specific timeline for the completion or handover of the housing units. Allocation of housing also does not mean that construction of the housing units has been completed or that the handover will occur soon. Nevertheless, the allocation contract is considered a title deed, provided that any remaining financial obligations are met.

Under Decree No. 66, those allocated apartments should have finished receiving them in 2018. Law No. 10 of 2018, which amended Decree No. 66, extended that deadline to the end of 2019. However, none of the planned residential towers for alternative housing has been completed to date.

Applicants have pointed blame for the delays on the GHE and the Damascus governorate. And to add injury, the social housing project delays usually mean the GHE raising estimated prices for their housing units due to increased construction costs and the depreciation of the Syrian pound. In 2020, the GHE set the estimated value at SYP 550,000 (about USD 200 at the time based on the black market exchange rate) per square metre, but raised that value at the end of 2022 to SYP 3.5 million (roughly USD 580).

For example, a 100-square-metre alternative housing apartment would have been priced at SYP 55 million in 2020. That same apartment would cost SYP 350 million today.

On top of the monthly instalments, the GHE requires alternative housing applicants to make large payments upon receiving certain entitlements, such as upon subscription and allocation. For example, when subscriptions opened for alternative housing in Marota City in 2020, applicants paid the GHE 10 percent the estimated value of their housing units at that time. To complete the allocation process, those applicants must pay the GHE 30 percent of the estimated value at the time. Should they fail to pay, they lose their turn for allocation.

Notably, because of the GHE’s continued price hikes, it no longer considers a subscription payment made in 2020 equivalent to the required 10 percent of the alternative housing unit’s value. Instead, it simply considers it one small payment instalment out of many. In other words, the GHE re-appraises the housing units retroactively, such that older payment instalments are no longer considered the same percentage of the total property price as they were upon payment.

This sparked discontent among applicants, who formed a delegation that met with Damascus governorate officials multiple times. According to the Marota City news website, the governor told the applicants’ delegation on January 8: “If you haven’t paid, then you won’t live here, and the project will halt.” The governor then asked them to “forget the past” and not discuss the project’s previous mistakes, also vowing to allow the 30 percent payment upon allocation to be completed in three instalments, pending a decision from the GHE.

Aleppo to Provide Temporary Shelters for Residents of Building at Risk of Collapse

17-01-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

Two temporary housing buildings have been completed in Aleppo’s Masaken Hanano district and will house residents of homes at risk of collapse, the governor of Aleppo told the state-owned Tishreen newspaper in early January.

The units are part of a project–slated for completion by the end of 2023–that the Aleppo City Council launched in 2020 to construct 10 residences containing 224 apartments in Masaken Hanano, in Aleppo’s eastern neighbourhoods, a source on the council told The Syria Report. The council owns the units.

However, the units were not fully allocated for residents whose homes are at risk, unlike what the governor said. According to the city council source, the council will not distribute them as alternative housing but rather as temporary shelters for emergency or urgent cases. For example, people facing sudden eviction from their homes due to imminent collapse will be allowed to stay in the Masaken Hanano housing units for a renewable six-month period, during which time they must search for other housing.

Unconfirmed rumours suggest that the 10 housing units project was built on the site of buildings that were destroyed by regime airstrikes during the period of opposition control over east Aleppo in 2012-2016. Thos destroyed buildings are said to have been owned by residents who were forcibly displaced from the area.

The city council plans to use the units to house some residents of the informal Al-Haydariyeh neighbourhood, which is now the site of a real estate development zone, the council source said. These residents will only be allowed to live in the units temporarily, until the housing units allocated to them are completed–which in turn will not be free of charge, as residents have to buy it.

Under Real Estate Development and Investment Law No. 15 of 2008, a real estate development zone may handle informal settlements, no matter the size of the latter. An administrative body subjecting an area to Law No. 15 may expropriate privately owned real estate located within that area in accordance with the Expropriation Law. In cases like this, the administrative body must allocate a portion of the residential plots it builds to sell to the owners of the real estate expropriated from that zone.

According to the website of the General Commission for Real Estate Development and Investment, the Aleppo City Council established the real estate development zone in Al-Haydariyeh in 2010. The 118-hectare zone was meant to “upgrade” the area, which contained unlicensed constructed buildings. The area is fully expropriated by the state, and all the real estate within it are included in the general zoning plan for Aleppo city, which was approved in 2004.

Beyond the housing project in Masaken Hanano, the city council has a number of other units in the neighbourhood, as well as in Al-Sukkari and Al-Mashhad neighbourhoods that can be used as temporary shelters. Such buildings are owned by people who were forcibly displaced to opposition-held areas. They were partially damaged, though the city council rehabilitated a number of them in 2021-2022 and they now house families who were evacuated from at-risk homes in Al-Saliheen, Al-Fardous, Al-Maadi, Al-Maysar, Qadhi Askar and other neighbourhoods.

In December 2022, the city council began demolishing some severely damaged and uninhabitable buildings in various parts of east Aleppo. The head of the city council said on November 9, 2022 that evacuations had begun for some 1,500 buildings at risk of collapse so that they could be demolished. He added that an action plan was needed to evacuate and find alternative housing for those residents, as a sizable portion of those buildings are still inhabited.

For those forced to vacate their damaged, at-risk homes, temporary housing is not easy to come by. The city council requires that applicants meet a complex set of conditions before being granted such housing. One person who was evacuated from their home in Al-Saliheen neighbourhood told The Syria Report that the city council refused to grant them the temporary housing usually given to people in his situation because “he owns a car.” The justification wasn’t clear but it could be that the council considers a car-owner as being relatively well-off and hence not needing support. Other people said that wasta, or personal connections, were needed to obtain such housing, or payment of bribes to city council officials.

Government Issues Decision to Expropriate Properties in Rural Damascus

11-10-2022/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

On August 28, the Damascus governorate’s General Establishment for Drinking Water and Sewage sent a letter to the mukhtar of a town in Rural Damascus stating that the government will expropriate property falling within two real estate zones per Article 9 of Expropriation Law No. 20 of 1983.

In its letter (Letter No. 10099), the water establishment referenced a previous letter issued by the Ministry of Financial Resources (Letter No. 5436 of August 16, 2022) and Expropriation Decision No. 1298 of August 10, 2022, which stipulated the expropriation of properties and parts of properties from the Ayn Al-Fijeh and Deir Muqarren real estate zones.

The expropriation decision, issued by the Council of Ministers, included hundreds of properties that would be expropriated in order to implement a project around the Ayn Al-Fijeh Spring. The decision affirmed that there were Expropriation Plans for the project, and that the plans were being arranged by the Prime Ministry, the Ministry of Financial Resources, and the Damascus governorate’s General Water Establishment.

On September 12, the governor of Damascus met with the mayor and city council members of Ayn Al-Fijeh to discuss the matter. Afterwards, the mayor published pictures of the expropriation decision and the water establishment’s letter on his personal Facebook page.

Notably, none of these communications mentions Law No. 1 of 2018, which established two protected zones around the Ayn Al-Fijeh Spring: the direct and indirect zones. The direct zone surrounds the spring and is meant to provide maintenance and safety preservation to prevent pollution, while the indirect zone includes land surrounding the spring and the direct zone.

Article 3 of Law No. 1 permits the expropriation of properties or parts of properties located within the direct zone, according to expropriation plans attached to the Law, and orders property compensation that accounts for the real values of properties.

Article 4 stipulates the creation of the two protected zones mentioned above and two pipelines for transporting water from the Ayn Al-Fijeh Spring to Damascus. The direct zone around the two pipelines is set at 10 metres side, while the width for the indirect zone is set at 20 metres.

The Law did not explicitly stipulate the expropriation of lands for both protected zones around the two water pipelines. It also prohibits certain work from being performed within the direct zones around the spring and the pipelines. This work included digging wells, transporting rocks, dirt or sand outside the zone, building facilities, using fertilisers and pesticides, paving or extending roads, and performing agricultural or manufacturing work.

The Law also stipulates an amendment of Ayn Al-Fijeh’s and Deir Muqarren’s zoning plans to remove any residential areas within the direct zone. However, it permits people in villages within the spring’s indirect zone to renovate existing houses rather than build new ones. Any residential facilities built within the indirect zone before the issuance of the Law may remain in place if they meet certain conditions. Many of Ayn Al-Fijeh’s older historic homes are located within the direct zones surrounding the spring and the pipelines.

The expropriation decision, published in the Official Gazette Issue No. 31 on August 24, 2022, includes several hundred completed properties and portions of 18 other properties. Most of the properties are in Ayn Al-Fijeh, with a smaller number in Deir Muqarren. All of the 18 partially expropriated lands are in Ayn Al-Fijeh. The expropriation plans for the protected direct zone around the spring have not yet been published, but the expropriation of land suggests that the plans include most of Ayn Al-Fijah and some parts of Deir Muqarren.

Regime forces have not yet allowed forcibly displaced people to return to their homes in Ayn Al-Fijeh. Residents fled the town during the regime’s military offensive on opposition factions in the broader Wadi Barada area in 2017. In 2020, the regime did authorise some residents to come check on their homes for the first time since the conflict. These residents were chosen based on lists approved by the national security services.

In a radio interview this past March, the Ayn Al-Fijeh mayor said displaced residents who seek to return to the town face two problems. The first is that the alternative housing project programme has yet to begin for owners whose homes were expropriated in Ayn Al-Fijeh and Wadi Barada. Second, public services have not yet been restored to the town. The mayor added that the municipality removed all “encroachments” from the spring’s direct zone but did not clarify what he meant by “encroachments.” However, aerial photographs suggest that much of the town has been razed.

In August 2020, the Rural Damascus governorate contracted General Company for Engineering Studies (GCES), affiliated with the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, to prepare detailed and executive zoning plans for a Wadi Barada residential suburb east of Ayn Al-Fijeh. The suburb would serve as alternative housing for owners of properties that were confiscated under Law No. 1 of 2018 and those whose homes were destroyed by wartime fighting in the area.