When the bombing forced Karim, a young gay man, out of Dahiya in Beirut’s southern suburbs, he didn’t head for the collective shelters the government opened for displaced families. “I would rather die than go to a collective shelter,” he told the French queer magazine Têtu, in a report translated by Erasing 76 Crimes on October 12. He stayed with an acquaintance instead.

His reasons are easy to understand. Three years earlier, he said, he’d been beaten by members of the far-right Christian group Soldiers of God and spent a month in hospital.

Karim is one of many. The war between Israel and Hezbollah that began on March 2 has displaced more than a million people in Lebanon, Reuters reported. For a lot of LGBTQ+ people among them, the state’s answer to that displacement simply doesn’t fit, and their own community has stepped in.

Shelters built for “families”

Government shelters were designed for conventional families and often leave LGBTQ+ people out, according to Reuters. Inkstick, which visited a queer shelter in May, reported that some government-run shelters turned away visibly trans people, saying they wanted to keep the facilities “family friendly.”

Sandy Mteirek, executive director of the Lebanese LGBTQ+ group Helem, told Têtu that “the national action plan implemented in response to the war was completely non-inclusive,” and that “once again this year, the admission criteria for collective shelters have left a huge number of people without housing.”

Karen, a social worker at the group MOSAIC, put it more bluntly: “The government didn’t wait for the war to neglect minorities.”

This isn’t happening in a vacuum. In 2023, the extremist group Jnoud al-Rab (Soldiers of God) stormed a popular gay bar in Beirut, a year after the culture minister effectively banned openly LGBTQ+ public gatherings, Inkstick notes.

Who’s filling the gap

Two Beirut organisations are doing most of the work.

MOSAIC (the MENA Organization for Services, Advocacy, Integration & Capacity Development) runs two shelter apartments for LGBTQ+ people in Beirut. When Têtu’s reporter visited, 16 people were living there, some for a few days and others for months, and the waiting list grew by four names during the visit alone. About 80% of the furniture in the first apartment was donated. The location is kept secret; residents aren’t allowed to take photos from the windows or balconies.

In May, Reuters reported that MOSAIC’s hotline was getting around 100 calls a day. “The people who call us are the most marginalized and have no safety net left,” Samar, a MOSAIC staff member who was herself displaced from Dahiya, told Têtu.

Helem, a Beirut LGBTQ+ advocacy group, opened three shelters during the previous escalation in 2024, housing up to 90 people, but funding cuts have since reduced its capacity, according to Inkstick. This time, Mteirek said, “In times of war, we became a daytime refuge.” Helem has also run an emergency helpline since March.

The goal isn’t to house people forever. “We support them during this transition period, giving them time to find housing and get back on their feet,” Karen said.

Small rooms, big relief

The people who’ve found a place describe something more than a bed. Mohammed, a gay man from south Lebanon whose home was bombed, told Reuters that arriving at the shelter “was like a safe place. I even felt a sense of psychological relief when I arrived.”

“I’m Mohammed, that’s it,” he said. “Just the way I want to be, not the way others want me to be.”

Many residents have crossed more than one border. Reuters spoke to Mina, a trans man who fled Egypt and arrived in Beirut in January. Inkstick met Lina, a young trans woman from Idlib in Syria. “We try to treat each other in a cooperative way, we help each other and we try to be friends,” Mina said.

Why it matters beyond Lebanon

There’s a pattern here that shows up in almost every emergency, from earthquakes to wars: disaster plans are written around a household that looks like a married couple and their kids. Anyone who doesn’t fit (queer and trans people, people estranged from their families, refugees with mismatched documents) is more likely to fall through the cracks exactly when the stakes are highest.

Lebanon’s queer community isn’t waiting to be included. As MOSAIC director Bechara Samneh told Têtu: “When a crisis hits, the community comes together to support each other!”

That community still runs on donated sofas and stretched budgets. If you want to help, the most direct route is through the groups themselves: MOSAIC and Helem.