As Egypt Ends Old Rent Law, Millions Face Forced Evictions

“What does it mean to have a city that is disappearing on purpose?” asks scholar and urban anthropologist Omnia Khalil in an interview with OkayAfrica.“The Cairo that we know has disappeared already, and there is a master plan for evictions.”

The latest move in this master plan comes with the Egyptian government’s repeal of the old rent law under which people have been inhabiting apartments at extremely cheap prices for decades, and across generations. On July 2, the Egyptian parliament passed a landmark amendment that will gradually increase rents for the next seven years, before repealing the old rent law altogether.

Some own other property or can afford to rent somewhere else, while others will find themselves homeless at old age, hoping their children can take them in. “Many people are going to join the new slums, regardless of their social class,” says Khalil.

Officially, this amendment intends to balance the disparity between renters’ needs and landlords’ rights — many landlords own property in Cairo and Alexandria’s prime areas, but make less than one dollar a month. Their tenants, meanwhile, might not even live in the property, or rent it out at a much higher rate.

But according to Khalil, who has observed Cairo's housing and architectural challenges for nearly two decades — first as an architect, then as an urban anthropologist — urban planners have long understood that there is a bigger shift happening: the eviction of Cairo’s working and middle classes at any cost.

“Especially in downtown Cairo and Alexandria, neighborhoods that have heritage value, people know that they’re being sold to the Gulf,” she says. “Their new owners are the Emirates, and many landlords are not happy about it.”

“The real beneficiaries of this law are not necessarily landlords or tenants, but rather major real estate investors and official bodies, especially the New Urban Communities Authority,” agrees Ezzeldin.

Khalil noticed the pattern for a new urban agenda in 2020. “Since 2017, there has been an attack every month on a different neighborhood or urban community all over Egypt,” she says. “It started with Gezirit Al-Waraq when the Maspero Triangle was already gradually getting evicted.”

These were extremely poor communities, often living in informal settlements, who had nowhere else to go. When they protested against their eviction, which was legally based on the claim that they were occupying state-owned land, they were arrested or even killed by security forces.

“Jumping to 2025, the appeal of the Old Rent Law is ‘normal,’ because the only question is: how can we evict people?” says Khalil. “This new rent law is not surprising. We cannot deal with these evictions [of the higher class] as if they are separated from Gezirit Al-Waraq up until today.”

“Whenever it hits a different social class, people think ‘why us?’ trying to find a justification for the injustice, so their heart doesn’t stop.”

While people in old rent law apartments might not be wealthy, they’re privileged enough to have a stable home, unlike those in the informal settlements that the government came for first.

During the 2011 revolution, there was an Arabic slogan that said, “You don’t care about what we’re talking about, because your children are still free.” “This is the best slogan for what’s happening right now,” says Khalil, who adds that this phenomenon goes beyond capitalistic investment. “It’s discipline and securitized surveillance to get rid of society. ‘You are Egyptians, but you are not important. We can replace you with other people.”

Article three of the new law establishes survey committees that will classify areas into premium, middle, and economic categories. In only three months, they are meant to determine a “class-based assessment” for new rental values.

Ezzeldin warns that these evaluations will expose families to social stigmatization. “Article three creates fertile ground for administrative corruption, as the committees’ work depends on the discretion of junior officials who may abuse authority and accept bribes or favoritism, as was the case in previous resettlement processes,” he says. “The absence of an appeals mechanism in the draft law means the committees’ decisions will be binding and irreversible, depriving affected citizens of the right to seek justice in court.”

Ezzeldin recommends that, instead, the state should have assumed its role in managing Egypt’s decade-old housing crisis by subsidizing rent for those in need and gradually increasing rent according to inflation.

He adds that there should be a clear definition of eviction in line with international standards, and monitoring mechanisms and legal safeguards that guarantee residents’ consent to relocation.

Egypt’s Ministry of Housing launched the first phase of the “Housing for All Egyptians” initiative, which offers more than 400,000 units across five stages. “Despite being branded as a ‘social housing’ program, the pricing structure places these units beyond the reach of many low-income families,” says Ezzeldin.

“Poverty estimates show that by 2025 the poverty line equates to about 2,757 EGP (about $55) per person, or more than 11,000 EGP (about $220) for a family of four,” he continues. “Even after the official minimum wage increase to 7,000 EGP (about $140) per month, the income of many households still falls short of the updated poverty threshold. With monthly installments starting around 1,600 EGP (about $32) and potentially exceeding 4,500 EGP (about $90), a large segment of the population simply cannot afford the required payments.”

Khalil envisions Cairo’s future urban space to resemble Rio de Janeiro or São Paolo. “Poor people, who are all of us, will live on the outskirts,” she predicts. “It’s not a matter of your class or how much money you have, because most people who have money have already left.”