❊ Old Buildings Collapsing In Lebanon? Blame Rent-Control

— The Collapsed building in Ashrafieh (photo source) —

The dust, the actual physical dust, hasn’t settled yet on the 5-story building that collapsed in Ashrafieh on Sunday. But as I read the coverage of that story in the Daily Star, I already found what I blame for this disaster.

There are some times where we should acknowledge that a disaster is simply a matter of bad luck, timing, or fate. This is not one of those times. People are pointing fingers to vague targets: It’s the careless government, the ineffective politicians, the greedy landlord. To me, this is about a particular law that needs to be changed as soon as possible.

Back to the Daily Star article. The most important sentence for this post’s purposes is this one:

The apartment block is known to be in an area of mainly old buildings. It included 10 apartments each with a monthly rent of LL25,000.

The owner of this building gets paid every month L.L 250,000 ($166) in rent. $166 for 10 apartments combined! One more time: $166 in rent for 10 apartments! Where on earth will that person get the money to maintain that building? Heck he can’t even paint the building if he wanted to, let alone maintain it, inspect it regularly and take care of it.

Proponents of the rent law which allows people to pay “old rents” for certain buildings always mention “fairness” to poor people as one of the main reasons to keep it. Was it fair to them that the building collapsed on their heads because nobody cared enough to maintain it? Ask anyone you know if they’d rather be priced out of a place or crushed to death.

Politicians are now making promises about better inspection and more sturdy construction laws. Hogwash! People will forget about these long term promises as soon as the media glare leaves the scene. The next building collapse will be the problem of some other politicians. Besides, our political system is too inefficient to actively, methodically and perpetually check for the safety of buildings.

That task should fall on the owners of the buildings who have the biggest incentive to maintain them. Nobody wants to watch their source of income fall apart. But with those ridiculous rents they are being paid, they might as well give away their property, or worse, watch them collapse before their own eyes.