Family Guided Home Construction in Gaza

“I have a dream to see a concrete slab above the top of my head before I die.”  That’s what a widow in Gaza told Dr. Salem Al Qudwa, the visionary behind Family-Guided Home Construction in Gaza. For her, and many Palestinians like her, dreaming of a concrete slab means dreaming of extending their fragile home to build-up to include space for the rest of their family. This project, Family-Guided Home Construction in Gaza, plans to do just that for 20 families in Gaza.

Currently a Harvard Fellow, Dr. Salem is a Palestinian architectural engineer from Gaza who has worked on many sites across the Gaza Strip, especially on shelter projects, with a strong commitment to affordable design for ordinary people. Dr. Salem joins Rebuilding Alliance as our Consulting Architect and Recovery Planner. Recently Dr. Salem spoke at Harvard and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Notre Dame, about his work in Gaza including his plans to restore agency and creative possibilities in Gaza through this project.

The first step is to select the 20 homes. To get started, Dr. Salem joined a zoom meeting with Rebuilding Alliance’s four Partner NGOs in Gaza to ask them to select family homes for this project. Together, we decided on the following criteria: 

• Poverty-stricken houses that are barely liveable and never fully completed in the first place, in remote, marginalized and poor areas lacking basic services;
  
  

• Houses without structural damage so to allow further vertical expansion;
  
  

• Priority to houses with a roof of metal sheet or asbestos;
  
  

• Priority to vulnerable extended families with elderly, sick, disabled, or woman-headed households;
  
  

• Families must have legal documents that prove house(s) ownership as well as ownership of the land on which these structures were built.

Site Engineer Heba set out to visit 25 candidate families to hear their stories and evaluate their modest homes, documenting their needs. She used a combination these two criteria and rankings for her technical assessments:

• Shelter vulnerability assessment tools developed by the U.N.’s Shelter Cluster - Palestine. The tools include Household Vulnerability (HHV), based on the presence of certain socio-demographic and socioeconomic factors in the household characteristics.
  
  

• Shelter Vulnerability (SV) based on the technical assessment of the housing conditions following the minimum standards for shelter.

The data from the assessment is now being entered and analyzed to score/rank the households, allowing our prioritization of assistance. Having a female Site Engineer as a key part of our R.A. team opens a way for the women of the households to bring forward their specific needs.

Our team will soon present their findings to Rebuilding Alliance’s new Architectural Advisory board and our Partner NGOs. In parallel, Rebuilding Alliance will clear the candidates to assure compliance with all U.S. laws regarding aid to families in Gaza and coordinate with the UN and other NGOs working within the Shelter Cluster Palestine to avoid any duplication of services.

How can a fragile house that has no foundation, and barely has walls or a roof, be upgraded to carry a second floor? 

• The project’s wonderful intervention is to plant four new structural columns inside the walls of one of the ground floor rooms to support a concrete slab on which to build smaller rooms upstairs;
   

• Working with the householders, RA’s NGO partners will hire builders from the same neighborhood to build up a stair and to add the upstairs rooms while giving families the opportunity to finish and possibly rearrange rooms on the ground level;
   

• These dreamed-of slabs will serve as incremental constructions to host the natural growth of the family, avoiding further overcrowding of their (and Gaza's) limited land-area, and providing thermal comfort inside the living spaces in accordance with minimum standards.

Does it work?  By installing structural columns, three families added second story rooms to their marginal homes in 2016. All reports are very positive. Eng. Heba will visit them soon to formally assess their home's structure and hear their assessment.

Once the 20 families are selected for this project, we will be ready to send you the project prospectus as RA launches a capital campaign to raise the funds needed to complete these 20 homes.

The 'Family Guided Construction in Gaza Speaking Tour' will take place from Nov. 3-20 with a remarkable speaker. We would like to connect with peace groups on the East Coast and also in the greater Ohio / Michigan area. Email us at family-guided_gaza_speaking_tour@rebuildingalliance.org f you would like to organize a speaking or house party event.

Thank you again for all that you do. Thank you for joining us to make Gaza, and the world, a better place.

Links:

• Troubled Everyday in/of Gaza' Dr. Alqudwa Harvard Forum 3-13-22
• Beyond Concrete Borders of Gaza, Dr. Alqudwa, Kroc Inst. 3-1-22