Apartment blocks in the Heliopolis district of Cairo.
Photographer: Islam Safwat/BloombergHousing
A Looming End to $1-a-Month Home Rentals Stokes Worries in Egypt
A longtime rent cap has kept homes affordable but stifled landlord profits. Critics of its reversal say the government must ensure no one will be left homeless.
Shuffling around her cramped third-floor apartment in the Nile Delta, widower Mariam Ali Khalil recalls when she could pay just 500 pounds (about $10) a month in rent.
The mother of three, who’s almost 80, is one of millions of Egyptians who benefited from a 44-year-old law that kept swaths of housing affordable. As the Middle East’s most populous country was rocked by periodic economic crises, it was a policy that helped many of the most vulnerable maintain a roof over their heads and pass along a home to the next generation.