Refugee housing policy: Learning from housing subsidies for Syrian refugees in Jordan | VoxDev

As forced displacement continues to escalate, reaching a total of 120 million individuals in May of 2024 (UNHCR 2024), there is an urgent need for evidence to guide refugee-hosting policy decisions. Roughly half of refugees globally live outside of camps, yet there remains limited evidence on how best to improve housing stability outside of camp settings (Kumar 2021, Agness 2023).

Refugees’ economic and social vulnerability suggests that they may require initial targeted support to find a stable place to stay outside of camps. In fact, housing and neighbourhood programmes in non-humanitarian settings, such as housing vouchers, public housing construction, and transfer of home titles have shown transformative effects for vulnerable communities (Chetty et al. 2016, Kling et al. 2007, Kumar 2021, Ludwig et al. 2013). Yet, offering targeted housing support to refugees—despite its huge potential to improve refugee’s welfare—may create tensions in local communities when hosts are excluded from these programmes. For example, large refugee inflows may increase housing prices (Rozo and Sviastchi 2021), and other vulnerable populations may view refugee-exclusive assistance as unfair.

We experimentally examine the trade-off between the well-being effects of a refugee housing programme and the social tensions it may induce from local communities who are also vulnerable but ineligible due to their non-refugee status. This trade-off is of particular concern for refugee assistance: most refugees rely on humanitarian or government aid to meet many of their basic needs, but are also at risk of experiencing social exclusion or even xenophobia from hosting country citizens. This tension could reduce public support for assistance programmes and may set recipients back by eroding important social relationships.

Source: Refugee housing policy: Learning from housing subsidies for Syrian refugees in Jordan | VoxDev