Parliament Diaries| Rent reform without receipts

The joint parliamentary committee convened for over five hours to debate the government’s proposed amendments to the Rent Control Law—a law that affects the housing security of millions. But as ministers and MPs traded arguments over the country’s rental future, one thing was conspicuously missing: reliable data. No one in the room could say with certainty how many tenants would be affected, or what their age, income, or social conditions actually are.

The government says it is acting in response to a Supreme Constitutional Court ruling that struck down the fixed-rent provision as unconstitutional. Yet its draft law goes much further—laying out a timeline for evictions without offering any clear understanding of the scale or complexity of the crisis it aims to solve.

What the session revealed wasn’t just a gap in information, but a deeper institutional blind spot. Lawmakers and officials alike seemed cornered—by the unresolved legacy of Egypt’s rent control system and by the limitations of the market-based laws that replaced it.

Outdated data for a new policy

The joint parliamentary committee reviewing the proposed amendments brought in the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics/CAPMAS to provide data. Monday’s meeting was scheduled to include a presentation of statistics by a CAPMAS representative. MPs hoped the numbers would paint a clear picture of the crisis—its scope, its urgency—and help them assess whether the government’s proposed alternatives were remotely feasible.

Instead, the government showed up selling a new policy with old numbers. Abdel Hamid Sharaf El-Din, adviser to the CAPMAS president, presented rental data from the agency’s 2017 census, which found that old rent accounted for just 7% of the 42,973,884 housing units in Egypt at the time.

Sharaf El-Din also cited older data. In 2006, old rent made up 15.8% of total housing; in 1996, 22.8%. The trend, he noted, shows a gradual decline.

He added that 1,642,870 households live in rent-controlled units, encompassing 6,133,570 people—an average of four people per household. According to him, there are more than 3 million old-rent units in total: 1,879,446 are residential, 575,000 are used for commercial purposes, and 9,307 serve dual functions. Another 118,835 units are vacant due to families living abroad, and 300,866 are vacant because the family resides elsewhere.

For this critical session, Sharaf El-Din brought outdated numbers. No new studies. Hoping to bridge the gap, MP Abdel Moneim Imam, head of the Justice Party, asked CAPMAS to produce a new study within 30 days. But Sharaf El-Din replied that the agency couldn’t meet that timeline.

Local Development Minister Manal Awad offered little clarity when asked by MP Ahmed El-Sigini, head of the Local Administration Committee, whether her ministry had prepared any kind of social impact study for the proposed law. Her response confirmed what many feared. “We’re here to listen to the MPs and CAPMAS in order to prepare for a study later”, she said.

The government is pushing for one of the most sensitive legal reforms in recent memory—without a plan, and without data. Committee chair MP Mohamed Attia Elfayoumi tried to downplay the gravity of the situation, focusing only on the number of households affected. But that number ultimately adds up to over 6 million individuals whose right to housing could be jeopardized.

Where are the numbers?

Despite having no new social classification or census data, the old CAPMAS figures Sharaf El-Din presented left MPs more confused than informed. He initially said there were around 1.6 million families in old-rent units, only to later revise that number to 1.879 million.

That contradiction raised eyebrows. MP Ihab Mansour questioned the inconsistency. MP Mohamed El-Husseiny of the Nation’s Future Party dismissed the figures entirely.  “I personally don’t recognize them,” he said, while MP Iman El-Agouz called the data misleading.

While Elfayoumi defended CAPMAS and its figures, El-Sigini demanded clarity on the discrepancy and called for the CAPMAS president to attend Tuesday’s session and present precise, updated numbers.

Even if CAPMAS corrects its inconsistencies, the next full census isn’t due until 2027. Until then, there will be no new demographic or income-based data to indicate who can handle an immediate twentyfold rent increase plus 15% annual hikes, who can afford subsidized housing units now priced above one million pounds, and who stands to lose the roof over their heads.

A human face to the numbers

After the uproar over CAPMAS data, Dr. Soheir Abdel Moniem, professor of criminal law at the National Center for Social and Criminological Research, took the mic. She presented a 2019 study by the center focusing on old rent contracts.

While MPs had shouted down CAPMAS’s representative, they applauded Abdel Moniem at the end of her talk. Her presentation shifted the discussion, putting a human face on the issue and challenging the coldness of the numbers.

The study, based on a representative sample (not a full census), found that 33.8% of tenants under old contracts are pensioners, and over 66% are above the age of 50. Around 55% oppose changes to the law, fearing eviction and the loss of their investment in the property—since 63% had paid large sums upfront at the time of the lease and also covered finishing and maintenance.

The center’s study proposed two key ideas. First, landlords could be allowed to reclaim their property, but only for pressing personal needs as determined by the courts, and with compensation to the tenant.

Second, it recommended a legislative phaseout of rent-controlled housing over ten years, with rent increases every three years. Tenants could remain for an additional five years if needed.

Abdel Moniem went beyond the old rent law, addressing housing as a human right. She argued that residential units are not ordinary commodities and should not be left to the market. She urged reforms to the current Law 4, which governs new rental contracts, and proposed safeguards like minimum lease periods, non-annual increases, and requiring judicial oversight for early termination—always at the tenant’s discretion.

In 1996, Egypt passed what became known as Law 4, a landmark shift in its rental housing policy. Unlike older laws that fixed rents at low rates and allowed tenants to pass leases to their heirs indefinitely, Law 4 liberalized all new rental contracts. Under this law, landlords and tenants were free to set rental prices and lease durations without government oversight. While it ended rent control for future agreements, it left millions still living under older, highly protected contracts, creating a divided housing system. Today, critics argue that abolishing the old system without reforming Law 4 will expose vulnerable tenants to a free-market rental sector that offers little affordability or security.

“You can’t abolish the old rent system and leave Law 4 untouched,” Abdel Moniem said. “Apartments aren’t just commodities—they’re a special category.”

‘No to eviction’

“No to eviction”—a slogan heard since the Israeli war on Gaza—found its way into Monday’s session. MP Atef Maghawry of the Tagammu Party denounced what he called the forced removal of Egyptians from their homes. But his remarks were struck from the record by Elfayoumi, who chaired the meeting. Maghawry protested “Don’t evict people. If you don’t like what I said, too bad. I don’t approve of it being removed.” The decision, however, was the chair’s alone.

Maghawry didn’t just oppose evictions; he also challenged the scale of the proposed rent increases. “Take someone who signed a lease in 1995 at 250 pounds a month,” he said. “Under the new law, that rent would jump to 5,000 pounds immediately, and with a 15% annual increase, they’d be paying over 11,000 pounds a month by year five. That’s more than 210,000 pounds in total, only to be evicted at the end of it.”

But even Maghawry’s math doesn’t quite hold up. After Al Manassa crunched the numbers, we found that a tenant who began with a 250-pound monthly rent in 1995 would indeed see it jump twentyfold under the proposed law to 5,000 pounds.

From there, even with a 15% compound annual increase, the monthly rent would climb to just under 8,750 pounds, with a total of about 404,000 pounds. The numbers fall short of the 11,000 a month and 210,000 total that Maghawry claimed.

It seems even those who oppose the government's math are having trouble with their own calculators.

Alternatives without a plan

Under Article 7 of the draft law, tenants, or their heirs, whose contracts expire after the five-year transition period would receive priority access to public housing—either for rent or ownership—within one month of the law’s implementation. Preference would go to the most vulnerable.

But when El-Sigini asked Minister Manal Awad about the ministry’s plan to provide housing alternatives, she dodged the question and passed the issue to Housing Minister Sherif El-Sherbiny.

That didn’t sit well with MP Tarek Shoukry, deputy chair of the Housing Committee, who clarified that the Housing Ministry only covers governorates under the New Urban Communities Authority. “What about the rest of the country?” he asked.

Awad promised coordination, but it was clear there’s no actual plan in place.