• 1 Between 1986 and 1996 the public sector built 29.5 per cent of all urban housing (not necessarily a (...)

1Even in the absence of a constitutional decree stating that adequate housing is a right to all Egyptians, up until the 2012 constitution the Government of Egypt has taken it upon itself to build subsidised housing, where, over the decades, various social housing programmes made up nearly a third of all housing production in urban areas.1

• 2 Adequate housing being defined by article 11 of the International Covenant Committee on Economic an (...)

2Given the dire state of the built environment in Egypt where millions of families lack adequate housing,2 and despite the billions in public funds spent on subsidised housing programmes, hundreds of thousands of people risked their lives to overthrow the Mubarak regime in early 2011, mostly on grounds of unmet social goals. If these large investments in public housing programmes did not achieve their advertised social goals, were there other unadvertised goals that they did achieve?

• 3 As evidenced in this thorough analysis of the Toshka project, the most recent of the so-called Nati (...)

3The most recently “completed” programme – because housing projects rarely meet their targets – was the National Housing Programme (NHP), or “Iskan Mubarak”. It spanned the period of 2005 to 2012, straddling the last years of the Mubarak regime, and continued throughout the transitional period that came in the wake of the January 25th Revolution. In this essay I aim to assess the NHP in light of the track record of clientelism and patrimonialism that post Infitah regimes have been known for. If the NHP was indeed meant for the low-income families, there are certain pragmatic parameters it should have followed, if not, then it joins other large High Modernist projects as being ‘designed to deceive’, where their importance for the regime lay more in starting them rather than completing them.3

• 4 Egypt is party to the ICESCR, with obligations to apply its mandate. Article 11 mandates the right (...)

4To assess this, I use three benchmarks. The first is a macro view of the housing programme’s pragmatic framework, i.e. its ability to reflect housing demands as evidenced by the number of units, tenure types, and geographic equity, as previous housing schemes have centred on the Greater Cairo region, while supply-side projects have rarely helped ease housing needs. The second benchmark looks in more detail at the adequacy of the housing units themselves, where the International Covenant for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESR) sets seven mandates,4 of which security of tenure, affordability, and habitability are important if the housing provided by these programmes is of any real use for its potential beneficiaries. The third aspect to be assessed is implementation, as there is a history of incomplete projects, and at a projected rate of roughly 80,000 units a year, this is by far the most ambitious public housing scheme attempted in Egypt.

• 5 (Abt Associates 2002).

5It is argued that authoritarian regimes have built rational-legal systems on deep foundations of patrimonial rule, where systems of proxy rule by middlemen such as the Caciquismo in Mexico, the Marabouts in Senegal, or Bossism in the Philippines, (re)distribute government aid in return for the people’s support of the regime.5 Indeed Egypt is no stranger to clientelism, where a culture of wasta and mahsubeyya, literally middlemen and favouritism, pervades in everything from the rigging of school grades, job placement – mostly in the public sector, but also in the private sector–, to the winning of contracts in supposedly open tenders.

• 6 (Blaydes 2006).
• 7 (Dorman 2007, 56-57).

6When it comes to elections, many voters, especially the poor and illiterate, have come to expect something material in exchange for their vote, whether on election day, in the form of cheap rice bags and cooking oil, or, much more expensive items such as infrastructure or housing that are promised in the run-up to elections.6 These different favours are usually disguised as subsidies, where a system of ‘devolved patronage’ has managed to dominate government functions, and at one point, exhaust its coffers.7

• 8 Press reports of some recent housing lottery protests (Al-Osbu'a Online 2013), (Al-Osbu'a Online 20 (...)

7Playing the dual role as a currency for elections while making the regime appear to respond to social needs, subsidised housing programmes have been a perennial occurrence. Over Mubarak’s three decades of tenure, two large national housing schemes were directly associated with him; Iskan Mubarak lil-Shabab, of 1996 to 2005 and Iskan Mubarak al-Qawmy which this paper focuses on. In addition to that, at least one large housing scheme and two slum “upgrading” projects were associated with his son’s NGO, Gam’iat Geel Al-Mustaqbal, using both public funds and donations from his business community, along with another three slum “upgrading” schemes associated with Mubarak’s wife, Suzanne, and also through her chairing of the Red Crescent Society NGO. The lack of transparency with which housing units have been distributed have been a recurring concern, as one needs to look no further than the supposedly open lotteries of potential beneficiaries, which more often than not end, or are broken up, in protest against the wasta and mahsubeyya by which the units are allegedly allocated.8

• 9 The Mortgage Law 148 of 2001 defined low-income as individual monthly salaries of LE 1,000, or hous (...)
• 10 (USAID 2006) In addition, three high level studies were implemented by the World Bank on behalf of (...)

8In one of his election campaign speeches, Hosni Mubarak pledged a subsidised housing scheme of 500,000 units for low-income individuals and families if he got elected in 2005.9 The emphasis here is on “elected”, as this was the first time the four-term president would be elected, all the previous terms having been achieved by referenda. It is not clear why that particular number of units was chosen for Wa’ad Mubarak (Mubarak’s (Electoral) Promise); as evinced by the USAID study that helped design the programme four months after it started, that number would be “difficult, if not impossible” to achieve.10

• 11 (Al-Yawm al-Sabe' 2010).
• 12 Electricity, water, and wastewater networks installed up to the boundaries of the plots, and the re (...)

9With a pledged fund of LE 7.5 billion (EUR 781 million) in subsidies, a strategy of seven schemes was developed, all being coordinated by an agency of the MoH, and where both public and private sector entities would implement them (fig. 1). In all, about two-thirds of the scheme was to be built by government agencies, while the rest would be built privately as Ahmed El-Maghrabi, then housing minister, emphasised was needed as the “government budget could not support” such a large number of housing units11 – even though the private sector units were to be built on state land where subsidised trunk infrastructure would be installed by the government.12 Ownership would be the dominant tenure option across all schemes (80 per cent), while public sector rental schemes would make up the rest.

• 13 A total of 5,181 feddans (21.8 million m²) were earmarked for the scheme. At least 50 per cent of t (...)

12Out of two schemes developed by the private sector, the Mustathmirin (Investors) was to comprise 100,000 units (20 per cent of the NHP) where variably subsidised land would be sold under a variation of conditions to big real estate developers, of which at least 50 per cent of the land would be the 63 m² units as in the Tamlik scheme.13 The second private sector scheme, Ebni Beitak (build your own house) was geared towards individuals, whereby 89,000 plots (17.8 per cent of the NHP) would be sold at subsidised prices with a requirement to build a minimum of one floor (a 63 m² unit) within the first year, and with a maximum of three floors.

• 14 (World Bank 2007).

13The centrepiece of the NHP is the 500,000 units headline. Half-a-million houses. It sounds like a big number, and in many ways it is, since the two overlapping programmes before the NHP, the Iskan Mubarak lil-Shabab (Mubarak Youth Housing) and Iskan al-Mustaqbal (Future Housing) mustered only 140,000 units over a longer time frame, or a fifth of the yearly output the NHP hoped to target (15,500 units a year, versus 83,000 units a year for the NHP).14

• 15 (USAID, Housing Study for Urban Egypt 2008).

14However, to put these numbers in context, an assessment of the scale of demand for low-income housing is needed. Unfortunately, data for housing demand is very scant, which is one of the more obvious indicators that the NHP was not designed to succeed, at least in terms of housing for its advertised beneficiaries. The largest housing demand study conducted in Egypt is the Housing Study for Urban Egypt, which was released in 2008, a full three years after the NHP had started.15 This study clearly states that its figures for demand are not universal, though in the absence of any other data, this is the only reference to proclaimed housing demand through questionnaires. Projecting its figure of 2.8 per cent demand among urban households to cover rural household demand assuming that rural demand is similar to urban demand –, over a ten-year period, the average yearly demand for housing would be about 870 thousand units. If we also use the study’s breakdown of the reasons behind the demand and focus on the most pertinent one, marriage, while excluding other demand reasons like looking for a larger unit, that would bring the needed units down to 361 thousand a year (41.6 per cent of demanders). Assuming demand is uniform across income brackets – which it is not – about 40 per cent could be considered low-income – the lowest two income quintiles, poor and extremely poor – translating into a target market of 144 thousand units a year. Thus the NHP would theoretically manage to cover almost two-thirds of low-income demand for immediate housing needs, which is a considerable contribution.

• 16 (Al-Ahram 2009).

18Overall, the programme’s tenure mix doesn’t seem to suit the profile of its intended audience, That being said, a considerable number of owned NHP units are said to be sub-let by the beneficiaries – illegally.16

• 17 (World Bank 2007).

19Again, historical evidence shows the distorted geographical allocation of units. Between 1982 and 2005, Greater Cairo (Cairo, Giza and Qalyubia) received 45.8 per cent of all public housing even though it housed only 27 per cent of the population.17

• 18 There are no publically available documents that reveal the allocation of intended or completed uni (...)
• 19 A recent newspaper article was headlined “Free Housing for Halayib and Shalateen (Red Sea) Resident (...)

20For the NHP, Greater Cairo was again allocated the lion’s share of units – 35 per cent – though with a ratio of about 0.032 units per family (fig. 2).18 In comparison, much higher ratios were allocated to frontier governorates like North Sinai (0.396 units per family), Al-Wadi Al-Gadid, (0.249) and the Red Sea (0.176). Though one suspects that this relatively high ratio is due more to a Bedouin resettlement policy rather than provision of low-income housing.19

• 20 For example, a breakdown of unit distribution for another housing scheme shows units in the New Cit (...)

21The lowest shares of housing were in most Delta governorates that had no desert fringes (Gharbeya, 0.001; Kafr al-Sheikh, 0.004; and Dakahleya, 0.006), which is understandable, as state owned land (a prerequisite for public housing) is in short supply there, and that their share is usually allocated to a New City in another nearby governorate.20 However what is not understandable is the low share for mostly Upper Egyptian governorates that do have a desert fringe, and also have land allocated to the New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA) to build New Cities (Assiut, 0.008; Beni Sweif, 0.012; Qena, 0.013; and Sohag, 0.014).

• 21 The right to adequate housing (Art.11 (1)) :. 12/13/1991. CESCR General comment 4, note number 8. h (...)

23There are some quantitative regulations that govern the NHP allocation process, as well as the specifications of the housing units themselves. However, to test how adequate these regulations are, they have been compared to the mandate set by the ICESCR on adequate housing.21 Besides being a universal benchmark, the ICESCR has also been ratified by Egypt making it part of local law.

• 22 (USAID 2008).

25Different literature states that the maximum portion a household should spend from its income on all housing related costs (rent or mortgage payments, utility bills, maintenance fees and taxes) is between 20 and 30 per cent. Indeed, in Egypt, where much of a stretched income goes towards food, health and education costs, rent-to-income ratios were between 15 and 24 per cent of household income, where the poorest quintile spent 24 per cent, and the second poorest quintile spent 22.2 per cent of its income, or between LE 150 and LE 170 (EUR 16 and 18) per month respectively.22

• 23 As per Mortgage Law number 148 of 2001, article 6, altered by prime ministerial decree number 456 o (...)
• 24 In 2008 households earning LE 2500 per month were in the 98^th percentile, (USAID, Housing Study for (...)

26Economic data at the time shows that the target beneficiaries of low-income earners, which common sense would have one assume are the poorest two quintiles, had household incomes of LE 600 and LE 800 (EUR 61 and 82) respectively (fig. 3). This meant an instalment or rent-to-income ratio of 25 per cent of income would be between LE 150 to LE 200 (EUR 16 and 21) per month. However, the legal definitions of low-income earners used by the NHP are completely off the mark. In 2005, when the NHP started, low-income was defined as no more than LE 1,000 (EUR 104) for a single earner, or LE 1,500 (EUR 156) for a household income, which was raised in 2008 to LE 1,750 (EUR 182) and LE 2,500 (EUR 260) respectively 23. A minimum income was also required for the ownership units at LE 650 (EUR 68) to qualify for the required bank loan, or LE 1,200 (EUR 125) for a mortgage. This means that the target range of the NHP was the 32^nd to 98^th income percentiles,24 or roughly the top half of the second quintile, all the way to the upper levels of the fifth (richest) quintile.

• 25 (Al-Ahram, Iskan Hukumi bil-igar 2010) and (Al-Ahram 2013).
• 26 (Amwal-al-Ghad 2010).

27In effect, this meant the exclusion of the bottom 32 per cent of earners (most of the second quintile and all of the first quintile) from all but 8 per cent of the units of the implemented NHP. With this, the only affordable options were the Awla bel-Re’aya scheme, which rented out for anything between LE 60 and LE 125 (EUR 6 and 13) per month depending on the whims of the authorities,25 and the Igar family unit schemes which rented for between LE 160 and LE 200 (EUR 17 and 21) per month.26 However, access to these units was limited as the Awla bel-Re’aya were small units of 42 m² and are not family units. Rather, they are intended for retired couples or widows who would normally be living off a very modest pension. The other Igar scheme units (an acceptable family size of 63 m²) were not available in all governorates and represented only 3 per cent of the implemented NHP.

• 27 An LE 30,000 loan is required from one of the participating state banks, where instalments are paid (...)
• 28 In 2010, only three years after the first units were delivered, 17,000 families had started default (...)
• 29 In the later years of the NHP, unit prices were double the original cost during 2005, thereby doubl (...)

28Lower middle-income earners were a little better off, though again only in theory. The Tamlik, Dthahir al-Sahrawy and Beit al-‘Aela schemes (61 per cent as implemented), required an LE 5,000 (EUR 521) down payment along with LE 160 (EUR 17) monthly instalments. However, to qualify for the required bank loan, a beneficiary must earn a minimum of LE 650 (EUR 68) per month,27 which would correspond to a household from the middle of the second quintile and up, or a single income from an even higher bracket. This took a large portion of buyers by surprise as demonstrated by the high rate of default in the first years of the programme.28 To make matters worse, later phases were even more expensive where banks and a recently introduced mortgage scheme required a minimum income of LE 1080 (EUR 113), thus only available for upper-middle income earners and above.29

• 30 Interview with Gamal (only gave first name), a beneficiary of the Tamlik scheme, who said he had to (...)
• 31 For phase four of the NHP from 2010 onwards. (Al-Ahram 2010).
• 32 (Ros-al-Youssef 2010) and (Al-Dustur al-Asly 2010) and (Al-Ahram 2010).

29Even if one could afford these units, accessibility was still theoretical, since to qualify for a bank or mortgage loan for the Tamlik units, beneficiaries must have had a formal job to act as guarantor towards the loan, rendering these inaccessible to almost 40 per cent of the working population who have informal jobs.30 A further hurdle was added later to the project when the original bank, Al-Ta’meer wal-Iskan, transferred all loans to Bank Masr (both of which are state owned), though the latter bank demanded a guarantor with a government job, no older than 40 years old, not an immediate relative, and who would have his or her salary paid directly into the bank on a monthly basis in order to have the value of the instalment deducted automatically.31 This move further excluded almost 80 per cent of potential beneficiaries, or as was to be expected, opened a black market to rent out government employees who would be found lurking outside the bank’s branches during application time, offering their ‘services’ for LE 15,000 (EUR 1,562) per application, or demanding to go into ‘partnership’ with the applicant in owning the unit.32 This last amendment however did not extend to the mortgage lenders which had a different application system, but a much smaller share of the NHP.

• 33 (Al-Masry al-Yawm 2007).

30The Beit al-‘Aela was just as controversial in its discriminatory hurdles, though in a slightly different way. This scheme of more attractive two storey units was only made available to male applicants from professional syndicates or government agencies who also had to prove that their wives had both a college degree and were employed, and that they did not have more than two children.33

• 34 (Nathmy 2012).
• 35 Permits and utility connections costs, LE 4,150, structural shell, LE 35,000, exterior finishing, 3 (...)
• 36 According to a price schedule for the “Degla Gardens” development.
• 37 Field visit to the Haram City development, 6^th of October City, Giza, 10.12.2013.

31So what of the remaining third of the NHP? Both private sector-built schemes were affordable only to the upper-middle and richest households from the start. The Ebni Beitak scheme (24.3 per cent as implemented), was highly affordable only if you were buying the land plot which required an LE 1,050 (EUR 109) down payment, and seven yearly payments of LE 1,350 (EUR 140) each. The rules were to build a semi-finished unit within a one-year time frame from plot delivery (later increased to 15 months), or else risk revocation of the land by NUCA.34 Even with an LE 15,000 (EUR 1,562) cash subsidy, it cost an average of LE 71,000 (EUR 7,395) to have a liveable unit with a finished interior,35 which equals an average of LE 5,733 (EUR 597) per month, driving many beneficiaries into debt to finance their units. The developer-financed units of the Mustathmirin scheme (6.6 per cent as implemented), required four bulk payments for reservation, signing of contract, and delivery, which would total between LE 30,000 and LE 55,000 (EUR 3,125 and 5,729) within a one-year period, and that is after an LE 10,000 (EUR 1,041) subsidy that not everyone qualified for.36 In addition, there would be monthly or quarterly instalments that averaged from LE 7,500 (EUR 781) down to LE 1,100 (EUR 115) per month for anything between one and ten year payment schemes. It is not surprising that upon visiting one of the more mature developments, owners had fenced-in the setbacks of the ground floor units in marble clad fences and elaborate iron gates, adding private little gardens to their property.37

• 38 As evidenced by numerous protests by applicants calling for a re-run of the lottery, which some aut (...)
• 39 (ONA 2012) and (Al-Dustur al-Asly 2010)
• 40 In one case, nine relatives of the local Member of Parliament from the National Democratic Party we (...)
• 41 740 beneficiaries took the governor of Gharbeya to court over the allocation of units –designated t (...)

32As if financial and class hurdles were not enough, the allocation process – supposedly an open lottery of beneficiaries that passed the screening process – was not transparent and was rife with accusations of fraud. On the one hand, it was not properly managed or monitored: not even a single digital database was used where it might have been possible to find out if a beneficiary already had a residence; and income declarations were rarely or arbitrarily investigated.38 Also, people could offer to pay the full amount of the unit in cash, a practice which favoured the more wealthy quintiles over the poorer ones, or were forced to do so by the authorities upon allocation in contravention with the contract which offered a bank loan.39 More blatant forms of cronyism occurred where regime parliamentarians were on the lottery and were allocated more than one unit,40 or where local authorities allocated previously reserved units to other beneficiaries who skipped the queue.41

• 42 There are regulations that prevent beneficiaries of subsidised housing from selling their unit in t (...)
• 43 (Hassan 1985)

33In a 1997 study on the formality of housing, it was found that most public housing units were not registered: the older units because they were under rent agreements (between tenants and state agencies), and more recent rent-to-own units because they had exchanged hands a number of times without formal transfer of title.42 Political control of tenants of public housing schemes has also been known to happen, where all permit authorisations for any change of activity go through government offices, and thus have been allowed or denied according to the political participation of the tenant in favour of the ruling NDP.43

• 44 Administrative custody, or hagz idari, is a procedure where a government agency that is owed rent o (...)
• 45 (Ros-al-Youssef, I'faa 17 Alf Mota'ather fi "Al-Kawmy Lil-Iskan" min fawa'ed al-Ta'kheer 2010) and (...)

34The majority of NHP are ownership schemes (79 per cent as planned/ 92 per cent as implemented), financed under special terms from both state-owned banks and mortgage lenders (for the public sector schemes) and private ones (for the private sector schemes). In the public sector schemes, units are delivered after paying an initial down payment, where loans/mortgages are paid back over 20 to 40 years. The main setback for bank schemes is that owners are not given the title deed to the property, or even a copy, until the full value is paid, while running the risk of administrative foreclosure in the case of default on payment of an instalment.44 Mortgage loans, though more rare, offer a little more security in that the Guarantee and Subsidy Fund (GSF) can guarantee missed payments for up to three months. Overall, the government has shown some leniency, possibly for political reasons, in both 2010 which was a run-up to an election year, when 17,000 tenants defaulted on their instalments, and in 2012 when an undocumented number defaulted in the wake of the January Revolution and the ruling SCAF was looking to quell unrest.45 Leniency took the form of waived interest fees on missed instalments as long as the total original value of the missed instalments was paid within a certain time frame. However, because there are no statistics, it is hard to assess the rate of default-caused evictions.

• 46 As in the contract for the “Degla Gardens” housing scheme by the developer Mi’mar al-Murshedy.
• 47 This may change soon however, as the mortgage companies and the GSF are pressuring to raise the len (...)

35In the private sector Mustathmirin schemes, financing is provided either by the developer – where buyers pay a considerable portion of the total value of the unit in instalments that start before the units are delivered – or through mortgage companies, where down payments are a little lower. Security with developer-financed projects has been very low, where a typical contract reveals that in the event a buyer wished to pull out of the scheme, a penalty equal to 10 per cent of the total value of the unit will be incurred, this penalty would also be incurred and the contract automatically deemed void if an instalment is missed for more than 60 days.46 These penalties are also levied even after the unit is delivered where the developer reserves the right to evict the buyer in the event he or she violates the rules of the re-sale of their unit to a third party, one of which stipulates a fee equal to 10 per cent of the value of the unit “for administrative purposes”. Again, mortgage schemes offer some more security, as low-income mortgages are covered by the GSF, and for the time being as lending is only 25 per cent of income, risk of default is lower than in countries that were affected by the 2008 mortgage crisis.47

• 48 (Al-Ahram 2013)
• 49 For some Awqaf administered units, (Al-Ahram 2010)

37The two rental schemes of the NHP are allocated under different conditions. The Awla bel-Ri’aya were on medium-term lengths of five to seven years, with annual increases of 7 per cent, after which the tenant would give up the unit, as the Ministry of Housing foresees that as a long enough period for the tenant’s income to have grown and thus the need for a subsidised rental unit to have ceased.48 This seems to be a very precarious situation, as most of the renters are supposed to be widows or retirees – as mandated by the application for these units – who have little if any foreseeable increase in their incomes. A minority of Igar scheme units though have life-long contracts as per the old-rent law.49

• 50 (Al-Ahram 2009).

38Another rental phenomena that should be mentioned here is the informal subletting of ownership units – which were bought or acquired for investment/speculation purposes as outlined in the previous section. Here tenants have very precarious tenure as no formal leases are signed since beneficiaries of subsidised units are not allowed to rent them out under the pretext that they themselves were in need of the units for personal use and not as an investment. There has always existed an informal rental market for public units and the NHP is no different where samasra – brokers, or middlemen – have set up shop in most of the inhabited clusters, where ‘beneficiaries’ have put them in charge of their units to rent them out, collect the rent, and even evict tenants at a moment’s notice if a suitable offer to buy was made.50

• 51 (Gray 2001).

42However, area isn’t everything. When viewed in light of crowding standards, smaller units are acceptable if their occupants are a retired couple with no children living with them. For younger widows, who in all probability have children, the Awla bel-Re’aya units prove too small. The larger units are just about acceptable for the average Egyptian family of four but in social health terms, having one small bedroom for two children of different sexes is a serious issue for an older family.51

• 52 12,638 units in Minya (Al-Masry-al-Yawm 2010) 620 units in Dumyat experienced settlement and tiltin (...)

44In terms of structural safety, a number of reports indicate failures in different schemes involving thousands of units, some of which were vacant or others that required evacuation.52

• 53 Nowhere on the application form is there a question for preference, especially one based on age or (...)

45Physical accessibility, as with almost all buildings in Egypt is a recurring issue. In the NHP most buildings are walk ups with no elevators, but do have units on the ground floor making about 17 per cent of them accessible to fully and partially disabled people, and to older people (Assuming that the average height of NHP buildings is five to six storeys). Again this is only in theory as there is no formal structure by which a person requiring a ground floor unit can apply for one specifically, while the units are allotted by (arbitrary) lottery.53

• 54 Interviews with Ramone and Mohamed (gave first names only) during a field visit to Ebny Beitak, 7^th(...)

47The answer is no, as tens of thousands of units – both allocated to beneficiaries and unallocated – have already stood empty for a number of years. The Ebny Beitak scheme fared the worst, as water and electricity infrastructure did not reach most phases for four years, rendering the personal life-savings invested in the units useless, forcing the beneficiaries to, incur additional costs renting out apartments in the interim.54

• 55 (Nathmy 2012).

48The self-build scheme also came up against price hikes in material costs, with steel increasing by 40 per cent, causing a steep rise in construction costs in addition to the payment of ‘protection’ fees to local thugs to keep materials from being stolen.55

• 56 (Sada al-Balad 2013).

49In addition, around 30,000 units from public sector schemes still have no infrastructure at least two years after they were completed.56

• 57 Where 67 per cent of land was allocated to New Cities, and the rest was located within city and vil (...)
• 58 There exists no regulation to designate certain percentages of land for public housing, while almos (...)

50One of the major problems with the NHP is the choice of mostly remote desert locations for the 67 per cent of schemes built in New Cities.57 Since the NHP must be built on state owned land, the low value outskirts were chosen, which are known for their low level or lack of services, leading to a high vacancy rate as low-income families find it difficult to live there.58

• 59 (Al-Zanaty and Way 2009).

51In a few NHP schemes I visited in 6^th October and Badr cities, on the fringes of Greater Cairo, there were no regular means of public transport, and the owners I did meet had private cars. To put this in perspective, the 2008 Egypt Demographic Survey showed that only 7.3 per cent of households owned a car.59

• 60 A statistics report with aggregated data from all public sector schemes of low-cost housing, iskan (...)
• 61 As opposed to the aggregated CAPMAS 2012, this MoH report (MoH 2012) disaggregates the number of im (...)

54In the end, public sector agencies averaged 34,000 units per year over the initial six year NHP timeline, roughly double the rate of previous programmes, but by completing only 203,453 units it met a mere 65 per cent of the target.60 As per a MoH report dated October 2012,61 and given a full additional year to the September 2011 deadline, albeit a year where government was still dysfunctional in the wake of the January 2011 revolution, the 500,000 units target had still not been met.

• 62 As per the MoH report (MoH 2012) which relied on plots delivered rather than plots built. Though a (...)
• 63 A former NDP parliamentarian’s real estate firm, Memaar Al Morshedy acquired 600 feddans in 6^th Oct (...)

56The private sector schemes fared much worse than the public sector schemes, reaching less than two-thirds of their target. Although, of the two schemes, the self-build Ebny Beitak scheme actually exceeded its target by about 5 per cent,62 while the big developer Mustathmirin scheme managed a mere 25 per cent of its target despite heavily subsidised land and direct subsidies to the developers. What has become of the subsidised land sold to these private developers is still an unresolved issue, especially that regime supporters were the prime beneficiaries of this scheme.63

• 64 For an in-depth analysis of this phenomenon see Shawkat, 2013.
• 65 1,800 units in Beit al-‘ela (Al-Masry al-Yawm 2011), 232 units in Haram City (Al-Ahram 2011), 650 i (...)

58Egypt on a whole does have a vacancy problem, with the most recent statistics showing 30 per cent – or a staggering 7.7 million – units empty, over half of which have not been completed.64 The NHP is no exception. During the security vacuum in the wake of the January 25^th Revolution, thousands of empty government housing units were stormed and squatted in by people, where a lot of these units were from projects that even pre-dated the NHP.65

• 66 A field visit to a portion the scheme finished three years earlier showed that a portion of the 5,4 (...)
• 67 A recent report to the housing minister stated 21,000 units from the NHP still had no infrastructur (...)

59So why were all these units empty? Based on newspaper reports, most were completed or nearly completed units but had not yet been allocated, while another portion had been allocated to beneficiaries, but either due to incomplete infrastructure, lack of services or security, or possibly due to speculation, they had not yet moved into them.66 One of the main reasons that may have kept these units empty is the fact that thousands of them still have incomplete infrastructure, and hence have not been delivered or beneficiaries have refused to accept them.67

• 68 A number of governorates reported extremely low demand in the first year of the NHP due to high pri (...)
• 69 Ahmed Ezz, a former high level NDP member and head of the parliamentary budget committee during ten (...)

60Another reason is that units were too expensive for the applicants, and just stood unsold.68 In fact, over the six year course of the NHP the costs of the units doubled, showing that even subsidised housing schemes were not immune from the real estate bubble that free-market housing experienced at the time, much to the benefit of the steel and cement industry where NDP members had controlling stakes.69

• 70 (Al-Yawm-al-Sabe'a 2013).

61A third reason, in the case of the village unit scheme Qura al-Dthahir al-Sahrawy, is that most of these desert units were meant to have land allocated to them for reclamation, but in the four years after their completion this land had not been readied, rendering the homes useless for the farmers who had applied for them.70

• 71 (Al-Mal 2013).

69As the unfinished schemes of the NHP muddled on in the two years after the revolution that toppled Mubarak’s regime, the ensuing regimes – the first interim military period ruled over by the SCAF, the year of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) rule, and the second interim military period of post June 30^th, 2013 – continued using the same un-transparent allocation processes and deceiving legal definitions for ‘low-income’ to allocate the remaining units. Furthermore, mortgage companies are calling for raising the already deceiving ‘low-income’ limit for affordable mortgages to LE 4,000 (EUR 417),71 while during MB tenure, the GSF has put in a request to raise the loan-to-income ratio to a potentially devastating 40 per cent instead of the current 25 per cent, and seems set to be allowed to do so by the next elected parliament. It remains to be seen whether litigation on the back of a new constitution that outlines adequate housing as one of the government’s responsibilities, will manage to change not only policy, but conduct.