Salem Hussein, a taxi driver, recently spent an entire day with a widowed mother and her five daughters looking for rental housing in Aden province.

Many apartment owners now refuse to rent their units to displaced families from Abyan province under the pretext that they do not pay the rent and refuse to vacate apartments when asked, Hussein said.

"At noon, after having failed to find a house for the family, the mother sold her gold in order to pay one year's rent in advance, however that attempt failed as well. In the evening, I had to drop the mother and her daughters off in the street without finding them a home," he told Al-Shorfa.

Saleh Awad, an elderly man in his seventies who can only stand if he leans on someone, took a handful of dirt to his nose and smelled it. He said he wished that one day he would smell the dirt of his village near the city of Zinjibar in Abyan, even if he returns "under the harshest of conditions," he said.

Awad and his family fled to Lahj when clashes broke out between the Yemeni army and Ansar al-Sharia in Abyan last year, and have been living with a relative since then.

"Living conditions are difficult for both [the host and hosted] families, which makes me wish I could return, especially since families living with other families and not in camps for the displaced do not receive monthly food aid, while families that live in the camps do, which adds huge burdens on the host families." he said.

Living with relatives

Human rights activist Omaima al-Khalil, a researcher with the World Relief Organisation, said hundreds of families were displaced from Abyan to Aden and Lahj and are currently living with relatives.

"The length of stay with host families, which has now spanned almost a full year, and the poor financial conditions of the host families have place heavy financial, social, and security burdens on the residents of the areas they live in," she said

"What the distress host families are experiencing is exacerbated by the fact that the government's executive unit for the displaced does not distribute food aid to those [host] families," al-Khalil said.

The World Relief Organization is currently conducting a census of host families, al-Khalil said, after it saw how they were incurring a tremendous financial burden because of higher water and electricity usages on top of the high cost of living.

Al-Khalil also told Al-Shorfa of "wrong practices" on the part of some of the displaced, who she says exploit people's sympathy with their status.

"The regulatory and supervisory committees and the representatives of the displaced are sometimes themselves the reason that the delivery of [aid] to people is hampered, either due to errors and duplication in registering the displaced, or the registration of fictitious names," she said.

Improper registration

"Local council members were excluded from the conduct of surveys and censuses, which gave rise to many problems, since some families were registered multiple times and some deserving families not at all," said Nasser Mansari, secretary general of the local council of Khanfar Directorate, whose capital is Jaar.

Mansari said it is important to involve local council members in the census of displaced people on account of their familiarity with the local population.

Ahmed al-Kahlani, head of the executive unit for the displaced, told Al-Shorfa that the unit is distributing food to the displaced, including bags of flour and oil, as part of the UN World Food Programme. The unit is also providing other necessities through government support programmes or private sector contributions.

Al-Kahlani said 168,990 displaced people from 31,421 families are registered with the executive unit, not including those on the waiting list.

He said displaced families living with relatives in Aden and Lahj are not receiving food aid because "resources are limited".

He said, however, that the executive unit has sought to provide educational and health services to displaced people hosted by relatives, adding that he has reported their problems and needs to the government so they can be appropriately addressed.