Lebanon in need of a housing policy

ENAR

There is a perception among Lebanese that the state is unresponsive to the needs of the public—it’s easy to understand why people might think that. For much of their thrice-extended mandate, from 2009 until May’s parliamentary elections, lawmakers neglected to legislate, the presidency was vacant for two and a half years, and laws that were passed were often not immediately or fully implemented due to long stretches of time under caretaker governments. Through most of 2018, the country has experienced a real estate crisis affecting low-income households looking to buy starter homes (see overview). Until the end of 2017, Lebanon was offering subsidized home loans through a central bank financing mechanism that made cheap credit available to the country’s commercial banks, on the understanding that savings would be passed on to home loan borrowers. This was the general nature of a multi-sided subsidy program that made up around $2 billion