Parliament Diaries| In a rare scene, Parliament listens

In a rare departure from the norm, the House of Representatives chose to listen to the people during its debate over the draft amendment to the old rent law. It opened the floor for both landlords and tenants to participate in two public hearings. Neither of which brought the deadlocked file any closer to resolution.

Over Sunday and Monday, the joint parliamentary committee assigned to the bill hosted six representatives of landlords and six of tenants. But by the end of Monday’s session, MP Ahmed El-Sigini, chair of the Local Administration Committee, called on both parties to submit their suggestions in writing.

Why public hearings?

On a matter this contentious, Parliament could not afford to exclude either party, even if the hearings amounted to little more than venting. Behind the walls of the 3.5 million residential units still under the old rent system, as counted in the 2017 census, lie accumulated grievances spanning generations. And looming over them are present-day fears that silence cannot conceal—fears only heightened by anticipation and mutual distrust.

The hearings may have carried an air of futility, dissolving at times into venting and noise without outcome. Still, it was necessary to bring these voices out from behind closed doors and off phone screens and social media chatter, into a face-to-face reckoning on the parliamentary floor.

The hearings were a kind of societal reckoning, exposing the deep chasm between the two sides, and confronting MPs with the responsibility to find solutions that are both equitable and acceptable.

But no final formula will satisfy both sides. No matter how Parliament tries to strike a balance, one side will inevitably feel aggrieved. In this case, justice is not merely a question of numbers.

Divided landlords

The landlords’ session on Sunday ended in unified rejection of the government’s current draft. They agreed on a key demand: terminate lease contracts for residential units after three years, instead of the government’s proposed five.

But their consensus splintered on the question of rent increases. Mostafa Abdel Rahman Atiya, head of the Old Rent Owners Coalition, proposed a minimum monthly rent of 2,000 Egyptian pounds for working-class neighborhoods, 4,000 pounds for middle-income areas, and 8,000 pounds for affluent districts (approx. $43, $86, and $172, respectively).

Murad Abdeen Mohamed Hassan called for rent adjustments that would allow landlords to afford an equivalent apartment in the same area. “We don’t want to liberalize rental contracts,” he said, “we just want the rent to match what it would cost to rent a place for my son.”

Meanwhile, Ahmed Abu El-Maati suggested a rent scale based on the building’s construction date, with both minimum and maximum limits.

Shorouk El-Islam Abdel Basset traveled from Alexandria to attend. Not only did she reject the draft, but she also called for a media blackout on the issue until the law is passed and published in the Official Gazette. She blamed Alexandria’s recurring building collapses on the old rent system. “Landlords have no incentive to maintain properties due to meager income, and tenants don’t feel responsible because they don’t own them,” she said. 

Notably, landlord representatives faced a backlash in their own social media groups, where many felt those who spoke failed to represent them.

Unified tenants

Unlike landlords', the tenant representatives appeared more composed and better prepared. Most were lawyers. They laid out detailed legal arguments and cited Constitutional Court rulings, with one participant debating directly with Minister of Parliamentary and Legal Affairs Mahmoud Fawzy on the nature of rental contracts.

They unanimously rejected the liberalization of rent agreements, citing the 2002 Supreme Constitutional Court ruling which guarantees the contract’s extension to the first generation of the tenant’s children. They warned that overriding this would endanger social peace.

The meeting wasn’t free of friction. Lawyer George Makram likened the proposed eviction after five years to forced displacement. This drew objection from Housing Committee Chair MP Mohamed Elfayoumi, who struck the phrase from the record and declared such terms unacceptable in Parliament.

Another speaker, Sherif El-Ga’ar, founder of the Egyptian Tenants’ Union, opened with a Quranic verse. “And do not send away those who call upon their Lord morning and afternoon, seeking His countenance. [...] So were you to send them away, you would [then] be of the wrongdoers.”

MPs interrupted him, objecting to the religious tone. And while the analogy may have been ill-timed, in a less charged setting it might have passed. But the charged atmosphere around this law left little room for nuance—and tempers were quick to flare.

Still, El-Ga’ar persisted through interruptions, defending tenant rights based on constitutional protections and the hefty “key money” payments many made to secure leases decades ago. “The tenant paid through the nose,” he said. “Now you want to give him a handout through a fund?”

Lawyer Michael Halim focused on the law’s implications for public order. He urged the Parliament’s Defense and National Security Committee to conduct a study on the potential street-level consequences.

The forgotten case: Commercial units

Amid all this, one key aspect of the bill remained overlooked—rented commercial spaces. The dominant discourse has centered on the right to housing and fears of mass displacement, but the implications for shops and small businesses were sidelined.

That changed when Tarek Mosleh, one of the tenant reps, took the floor. A retired man in his sixties, Mosleh invested his savings in several downtown Cairo shops under the old rent regime.

“I’ve got contracts,” he said. “I didn’t invest in villas in Marina. I invested in shops that employ people.”

Mosleh owns four stores and employs several workers. He’s run one of them, passed down from his father, since 1964. “If they evict me, what am I supposed to do?”

The government has yet to explain what it would do with cases like his—investments built legally under a system that still governs most shops in areas like Downtown, Shubra, Manial and Zamalek.

But Mosleh also spoke as a landlord. “My father bought land in Mohandessin in 1971 for 7,139 Egyptian pounds. We built a building with subsidized steel and cement. The government set rent at 42 pounds. And yes, we took key money, 7,500 pounds.”

He spoke with warmth about his own tenants. “One woman, her husband was a university professor. She’s classy, she made her place beautiful,” he said. “How can I look her in the eye and say ‘Get out’?”

Mosleh called for lawmakers to act in good faith. “I’m speaking the truth as God sees it. I don’t have many years left.”

At the end of his remarks, the room applauded. His wasn’t a constitutional argument or a legal loophole. It was just a human voice. He may not be the weaker party, but he was the most honest, laying bare the deeper complications of this enduring issue.

Parliament will continue its public dialogue in upcoming sessions with several governors. For now, it has opened space for genuine deliberation on one of Egypt’s most fraught issues. One that affects millions. But for Mosleh and others, the real test lies ahead: whether the law will lean, even briefly, in favor of the weaker side.