ALEPPO, Syria (North Press) – Civil Administration in Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiya in the city of Aleppo, north Syria, said that there are about 18,000 limited in-come and displaced families from different parts in Syria, whom benefited from the decision to prevent the rental and mortgage of empty homes.
The Civil Administration there secures free houses for the displaced and limited in-come people to smooth the economic burdens.
In case the return of the house owner, the committees of the Administration will make sure of his ownership by asking for a real estate registration statement within the site plan chart, two witnesses of the indigenous residents of the neighborhood and a purchase contract of the houses in the slum areas, to hand over the properties back to him.
Eastern Sheikh Maqsoud district is within the site plan chart and all estates have official ownership documents, while western Sheikh Maqsoud district is a slum area and all houses owners do not have official ownership documents.
Free shelter
Najib Rasho, a displaced from Afrin, said that he left all his stuff in Afrin when he fled from the Turkish attacks towards Ashrafiya district in Aleppo where he lived in a free house that the Commune (the neighborhood’s council) secured to him.
“Providing free shelters is a good step, since we do not have money to rent a house,” the displaced said.
About 22,000 families including 80,000 people live in Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiya districts, Baddran Hamo, head of Syrian Democratic Council’s Affairs committee in Aleppo, said in a previous statement with North Press.
Large numbers of people were displaced from these neighborhoods at the beginning of the Syrian crisis that escalated in Aleppo in 2012 emptying many houses.
Subsequently, they became a safe haven for many people from both inside and outside the city of Aleppo after witnessing relative calm after the exit of armed opposition groups from the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo in 2016.
In the neighborhoods of western Sheikh Maqsoud, eastern Sheikh Maqsoud, and Ashrafiyah, all types of people including Kurds, Arabs, Christians, and Yazidis live.
Many families came to the districts depending on their relatives who had houses, before the civil Administration organized the process through enumerating the empty homes, documenting their owners and repairing them to become habitable.
They sheltered many of Afrin’s displaced people after the invasion of Turkey and its affiliated armed opposition groups in Afrin region in March 2018.
Owner’s rights
Khalil Mando, co-chair of the Commune Martyr Reber in the eastern Sheikh Maqsoud district, told North Press that they did not make any rental or mortgage contracts, “all families live in the houses for free, in order to help them especially those whom their areas were occupied.”
They secured free houses for displaced people within “certain measures and roles that they do in order to guarantee the real owner and the resident’s rights at the same time,”
Before providing residents with free houses, Communes in Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiya form a committee to inventory house items in order to hand them over to the owner in case he returns.
Mando stated that if the owner returned, they would give resident in the house a period of two weeks to evacuate “after securing another house”.
In case the resident made some repairing works in the house and the owner came back, the commune would form a committee of about five people to value the costs the resident paid for maintenance.
The house owner pays the resident all repair expenses after he leaves the house.
Owner’s relatives
Relatives of the owner of the first and second degree are entitled to claim the house, “but in order to live in, provided that they do not own another house, whether in the neighborhood or outside it, and bring the lease contract of the house in which they reside if they live in neighborhoods in Syrian government-held ares,” according to Mando.
On May, the People’s Municipality, accompanied by the committees of the communes of eastern Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhoods, carried out a cleaning campaign for all houses whose residents had migrated or were displaced during the war years and have not returned to it yet.
Mustafa Muhammad Ali, co-chair of the Housing Contracts Committee for the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiya neighborhoods, said that they receive families of all communities and ethnicities, “but according to a specific mechanism.”
Housing contracts are granted after making sure that all conditions are met, such as being a displaced person or a person with limited income and does not own a home or have relatives residing in the neighborhood, according to Muhammad Ali.
He pointed out that the request of those who has a rented house in government-held neighborhoods is rejected “because our goal is to help the displaced who left everything behind or those with limited income who have jobs here and do not own a home.”
In addition to those people who “threat the safety and interior peace in those districts,” he added.