Nada Dallal raves about the over 100-year-old house she used to live in. The house was in Tariq El Jedideh, a district in the south of Beirut. “It was a big, old-fashioned house with a three-and-a-half-meter-high ceiling and custom-made floor tiles in bright colors, green and yellow and white. And it had that typical round arch at the entrance.” After twenty years, she had to leave the house. Instead of renovating the house, the owner sold it to an investor. And the tenant had to leave.

Many people in the Lebanese capital are currently in the same situation as Dallal. More and more luxury towers made of concrete and glass are shooting up because landlords are selling their land to real estate companies. They then clear out the apartments, build new houses and thus drive up the rent prices. Without a rent policy, rent in the Lebanese capital is becoming more and more expensive. There was once a rent cap in Beirut, which the state enforced in the 1940s. But the neoliberal policies of the post-war years did not allow the state to interfere in the rental market. In 1994, building contractor, millionaire and Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri began rebuilding Beirut. He had a vision: Beirut should become a world-class capital. Hariri founded a company called “Solidaire”, bought up lots of land and started building a polished city center.

Until the car-bomb attack: On February 14, 2005, Rafiq Hariri was driving his convoy of vehicles on Beirut’s coastal road when a bomb exploded. He and 22 other people died. His neoliberal construction capitalism lived on. The city still operates in this spirit today. Housing policy in Lebanon is also shaped by neoliberal ideas.

Listen to the radio reportage, aired on Deutschlandradio Kultur.