Urban October is a month-long campaign focused on sustainable urbanization and resilient cities. As our societies become increasingly urbanized, and the effects of climate change intensify, UNDP works around the world to make cities more livable for all their residents.

The first time I returned to my home on the Gaza seafront, during a ceasefire in March 2026, I brought my 9-year-old daughter, Mariam, with me. She had insisted on coming, wanting to see her room and find some of her teddy bears.

For years, that house had been the backdrop of my life and my daughter's childhood, the place where she grew up, where we shared meals, celebrated birthdays, argued over small things and laughed at things that probably weren't very funny. It was an ordinary family home, but to us it held our entire life and all our memories.

“Where is my room, Papa?” she asked, “Where is our home?”

I looked at her, thinking about how strange it was that the place where her life had begun had become somewhere she could no longer recognize as home.

For many people, home is such a natural part of everyday life that its true value becomes visible only once it is lost. In Gaza, generations of families have lived with displacement—for refugees from decades past, and now for the newly displaced people, nothing is more urgent than finding a safe and dignified place to call home.

For years, I had helped other families return to their homes. Between 2009 and 2014, I managed housing recovery projects in Gaza that supported thousands of families to rehabilitate partially damaged homes or rebuild from scratch. I had seen what returning home meant.

It was never simply about repairing walls or replacing windows. It was the moment a family could close its door again and feel it had a place of its own. It meant parents knew where their children would sleep. It meant privacy. A kitchen where a family could prepare a meal.

A home of my own

I started my own family life in Jabalia refugee camp, in a modest apartment of about 45 square metres. It wasn't much, but it was our home. After almost 10 years of hard work, and real sacrifice, I was finally able to build a house of my own. I remember the relief of that moment. At last, I had a home entirely my own. 

I have come to understand that a house is never just concrete, steel and furniture. It is years of work, years of savings and sacrifice. It carries the memories of everyone who lives there.

During the early days of the war, I received the news that my home had been reduced to rubble. After years of helping other families rebuild, I suddenly found myself facing the same question that thousands of families across Gaza were asking me: "Where will my family live now?"

This time, I understood the loss personally. 

During the war, I was displaced 13 times. I moved with my family from one place to another. I lived under the same roof as other people, with no privacy at all. Those experiences changed the way I understood my work.

I fully understand what losing a house means.  

When you lose a home, you do not lose only a physical structure. You lose a piece of your heart, a piece of your memory, your privacy, your sense of belonging. You lose the spaces where your children grew up and where your family gathered, celebrated, disagreed and laughed.

During the war, displacement and the loss of homes became a shared reality for families across Gaza—including my own.

Rebuilding neighbourhoods, not just shelters

This experience is one of the main reasons I joined UNDP. I wanted to participate directly in the recovery and rebuilding of Gaza—its homes, neighbourhoods and the life around them. I saw in UNDP the experience, institutional integrity, transparency and human-centred approach needed to contribute meaningfully to that responsibility.

Today, I manage UNDP's Inclusive Transitional Community Neighbourhoods Programme, a central part of our response to the shelter and housing crisis. Through the programme, we support displaced families with dignified transitional shelter, help families return by rehabilitating partially damaged homes, and connect shelter with water, sanitation, infrastructure and essential services, alongside livelihood and social cohesion. 

Our work must be more than an emergency shelter response. It should create a pathway from dignity during displacement, through transitional shelter and housing rehabilitation, towards safe permanent homes and functioning neighbourhoods. 

That is why we chose to structure our response around not only providing shelter, but also providing essential services for neighbourhoods—and there is something meaningful in this choice, rooted in Arabic itself. The word for neighbourhood, hayy (حي), belongs to the same linguistic family as hayat (حياة), meaning life, and ihya' (إحياء), meaning revival, or bringing something back to life.

For me, this captures exactly what rebuilding neighbourhoods in Gaza should mean. It is not simply about putting buildings back where they once stood. It is about creating the conditions for life to return to homes, to streets, and to communities.

Mayyada, a young mother we met who used to work as a portrait painter, told us she would return to her art. Um Jaber began planting vegetables on the land beside her shelter unit. Alaa opened a grocery store with her husband, who lost his leg during the war.

Beyond shelter, families are gradually restoring everyday life.

Something more human

Like many parents in Gaza, I hope that one day my daughters will remember our home not only for how it was lost, but for how life was rebuilt around them.

For me, adequate housing in Gaza is about much more than counting shelters installed or houses rehabilitated. It is about restoring the conditions in which human life can happen again. It is about protecting dignity today while creating a path towards recovery tomorrow: from a shelter to a home, from a home to a neighborhood, and from neighborhoods to a city brought back to life.

Perhaps rebuilding Gaza ultimately means not only rebuilding what was destroyed, but helping life, hope and peace find their way home again.