Nearly three years into the war in Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians are living inside structurally damaged buildings that authorities have warned could collapse at any moment — because there is simply nowhere else to go. The crisis came into sharp focus on September 16, when a six-storey war-damaged residential building in Gaza City collapsed, killing 21 people, including 12 children. Gaza's Civil Defence estimates that around 2,000 structures across the Strip are currently at risk of collapse, a figure that has galvanised local municipal teams to patrol streets and register unsafe buildings — though they have few tools to offer displaced residents beyond warnings.

The human reality behind those numbers is one of exhausted families caught between equally dangerous choices. Masada Abu Jarad, 60, shelters with her family under a tent pitched inside their own apartment, where a partial roof collapse has left broken concrete and twisted steel bars exposed to the open sky. The Palestinian Red Crescent and Civil Defence visited and urged them to leave, but Masada cannot afford to rent elsewhere and has no safe place to return to — her family's original home in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, was destroyed early in the war. Nearby, Abdullah Abu Hajar, 40, lies awake each night in the visibly unstable al-Najma building in Gaza City's Remal neighbourhood, listening for the sound of shifting concrete while his wife and five children try to sleep. Municipal notices posted on the building's outer walls warn that it is unsafe. "I stay awake all night, keeping watch," he said. "I can't close my eyes." Islam Hassanein, 36, lives in a single room on the third floor of a leaning building that she cleared of rubble herself. A column has already fallen. In a building across the city, Heba Arafat, 47, walks across a visibly tilted floor — the foundations of her four-storey building were destroyed during Israeli ground operations, leaving it dangerously inclined. Thirty people now live there, their broken windows covered with bed sheets for privacy.

The scale of destruction underpinning this crisis is staggering. A joint assessment by the United Nations, the World Bank, and the European Union found that 371,888 housing units — 76.6 percent of Gaza's total housing stock — had been destroyed or damaged as of October 2025. The same assessment estimates that reconstruction will require more than $71 billion over the next decade. UNICEF calculates that nearly 84 percent of Gaza's population, more than 1.76 million people, are living in overcrowded displacement sites or damaged and inadequate shelters. Many have chosen damaged buildings over tent camps precisely because the camps offer little protection from heat, cold, or flooding — yet the buildings carry their own lethal risks, particularly as winter approaches with rain and colder temperatures that can further weaken already compromised structures.

Relief efforts are severely constrained. Israeli restrictions block the entry of tents, tarpaulins, construction machinery, spare parts, and lubricants into Gaza, with Israeli authorities justifying the measures on security grounds. UN Secretary-General's spokesman Stéphane Dujarric has highlighted that these restrictions prevent even basic debris-clearing equipment from entering. Reconstruction tied to peace negotiations has not begun, as those talks have remained stalled for months. For families like Masada's, Islam's, and Heba's, the combination of destroyed housing, blocked aid, and a conflict that has not fully ceased leaves them trapped — sheltering in the rubble of the previous disaster while fearing the next one. "We have no options," Masada said. "I want to leave, but who will give me an alternative?"