CAIRO – More than 16 million people out of a population that has exceeded 80 million people currently live in Egypt's slums, most of which are based in the greater Cairo metropolitan area, Ahram Online reported Saturday. Inhabitants are forced to live in inhumane settlements, owing to a severe shortage of affordable housing in the cities, suffer from lack of electricity and sewage services, and are subjected to mistreatment by the state, including regular forced evictions. Thousands of poor Egyptians who survive in the slum areas are left on their own to deal with extreme heat in the summer or treacherous rain stints such as a recent storm that drenched shantytown after shantytown. The ever-growing number of slum dwellers highlights the huge disparity in the distribution of residential units and the unequal access to housing options. The Egyptian center for housing rights (ESCR), an NGO specialized in defending citizens' right to adequate housing, said in a recent report that although millions of citizens lack proper shelter there are almost 6 million vacant residential units in Cairo alone. The report also stated that almost 250,000 families own more than three housing units while 18 percent of Egyptian families live in “one room” units. The deteriorating slum issue is perceived by the Egyptian government as a “ticking social bomb.” The government has repeatedly said that it lacks the resources to build enough units to keep up with high birth rates. However, the problem cannot be reduced to scarce resources or inadequate infrastructure but should be attributed to the absence of a “social justice” mindset in formulating housing policies, ESCR has said in several press statements since the January 2011 popular uprising. “Governmental policies since the 1970s have always been biased to big capital and profit accumulation rather than the society's lower tranches. Governments literally ignored informal housing, and it was never their priority”, Khaled Ali, a prominent labor lawyer and former presidential candidate. Housing experts have denounced “neoliberal” policies that were implemented in 1991 as a result of the Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Program. – Reuters
