Lessons from a conversation with an interdisciplinary urban planner from Cairo who shared their perspective based on their personal experience living in Cairo with an eye toward bottom-up social change. Because their expertise is not housing-focused, this urban planner chose to remain anonymous.

My key takeaways from Cairo:

  • Housing choices are greatly determined by social expectations – not just policy.
  • While homeownership can be empowering, it can also severely limit equality, particularly when there are restrictive norms and rights around homeownership.
  • When people don’t feel that they have political agency, they are more likely to accept unfavorable conditions and less likely to critique or engage with government processes or policies.

What makes Cairo’s story about affordable housing unique?

The intersection of gender, class, and relationship status in relation to real estate in Cairo is important to understand; patriarchal values are perpetuated through social norms and financial rights related to housing. For example, it’s not socially acceptable for women to live alone in Cairo, so accessing housing (at any cost) as a single woman is a challenge. Married couples are expected to own their homes, which is a social norm perpetuated directly through media messaging, and places great social and financial pressure on young couples. The financial burden of buying a home is placed solely on men. Women do not receive ownership rights, but their social status can improve with marriage. In turn, if a couple divorces, women are left without any financial benefit from homeownership. This patriarchal system imposes challenges for both men and women: women’s rights are limited, and men and their families have significant financial expectations. Also, social capital in Cairo is tied strictly with class status as perceived by neighborhood residency, placing an outsized emphasis on purchasing a home in a well-regarded neighborhood.

What is the state of affordable housing in Cairo today?

Under socialist housing policies in the 1970s, more people in Cairo rented than do now and there were protections for lifetime rents as low as $1/month. Governmental policies have since changed and, as described above, attitudes toward housing in Cairo today are largely driven by the standard that couples buy their own apartment units upon getting married; renting is not a socially acceptable option and is not promoted by government policies. With this strong culture of homeownership (including owning apartment units) in Cairo, there are not many renters. Most units are designed for families or young couples because of the social expectation that married couples must purchase their own units with an eye toward investment, though there have recently been some compounds designed with smaller units affordable for younger people.

Cairo is generally divided into areas considered to be the “old city” and “new city.” New Cairo has many new large-scale gated residential communities with services that are expensive housing options. These communities are considered to be higher class, perpetuated by media and advertisements, and these high class labels hold incredible social capital. Even though living in these areas in new Cairo is unaffordable to most people, the housing in those neighborhoods is still considered to be an aspirational goal for most people rather than being critiqued for how unattainable it is or as an example of inequality.

The housing market in Cairo is unstable, and the housing supply is too great. There are many vacant units that are investment properties for Egyptians who live abroad. Prices for new units are greatly determined by marketing phenomena, creating buying frenzies for people who will buy units without seeing them in person. Especially in these instances, quality of construction is not guaranteed. A housing bubble is growing that will eventually burst when supply of quality housing and demand must normalize.

Some housing requires car ownership, which further limits housing choice. Only 9% of Egyptians own cars and transit is not well developed (e.g. there are only three transit lines in Cairo).

If you could wave a magic wand and change any one policy at any level of government, what would it be and why?

Rigid definitions of class are problematic throughout Cairo. Government ID cards list personal details including religion and occupation in addition to addresses, all of which lead to class stereotyping. Addresses hint at the neighborhoods people live in, which directly leads to class assumptions. These class stereotypes have real-life implications in encounters with police; for example, having no occupation and residing in an “informal area” can lead to worse police treatments.

What makes you hopeful about housing in Cairo?

  • Newly established government programs allow for youth to access more housing opportunities.
  • Housing quality in new construction is improving, though it’s unclear whether the quality can be maintained at a great scale.

What are effective ways to include the people most impacted by affordable housing issues in government-level decision making?

Ideally, a participatory planning process would be established to prioritize including citizens in government-level decision-making, but the housing market is currently driven by powerful actors and investors and a participatory process would be challenging to establish. Literacy rates in Cairo are as low as 25%, which inevitably hampers engagement, and people tend to focus on short-term decision-making with immediate results rather than long-term planning processes. Notably, people in Cairo don’t feel empowered to advocate for affordable housing or other issues tied with equality, and see affordable housing as a favor from the government rather than a right.