Even though mathematically more housing than needed is produced in Egypt resulting in millions of vacant homes,[1] large portions of its residents live in inadequate housing that may lack secure tenure, safe drinking water and wastewater treatment, are crowded or are prone to collapse, as better housing is widely unaffordable.[2][3] While there is also a problem with homelessness especially amongst children.[4]
Egypt has also witnessed a number of urban disasters that have led to many deaths and mass homelessness, including the 1992 Dahshur Earthquake, the 1994 Floods in Upper Egypt, and the 2008 Duweiqa Rockslide, Cairo.
Efforts to address housing inequity date back by a century at least, ranging from designing model villages, to rent control, and building public and cooperative housing. Since the 1980s, housing policy in Egypt has focused on what was termed the 'housing shortage',[5] a quantitative estimate of needed homes, to be solved by almost solely by building public housing estates in new towns in the vacant desert periphery of existing cities.[6] This single dimensional approach to the problem has not been able to solve it, especially in the face of increasing deregulation of the housing market, spurring the commodification and finacialization of housing.[7]
- ^ "Egypt Housing Profile". UN-Habitat. 2016. Retrieved 2022-12-18.
- ^ "Overall Indicator of Deprivation in the Built Environment". Built Environment Deprivation Indicator (BEDI). 2016. Retrieved 2022-12-18.
- ^ "Urbanization". Egypt Social Progress Indicators. 2020. Retrieved 2022-12-18.
- ^ "A new approach to Egypt's street children". UNICEF.
- ^ Hanna, Milad (1996). الإسكان والسياسة (in Arabic). القاهرة: الهيئة المصرية العامة للكتاب.
- ^ Sims, David (2010). Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control. Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press. pp. Ch. 5&6.
- ^ Shukrallah, Salma (2017-11-17). "Analysis: Government Policy Commodifies Housing". Built Environment Observatory. Retrieved 2022-12-18.