Egypt plans to build 1 million homes for poorer people at a cost of
almost $20 billion over the next five years, the housing minister said,
to ease a crunch that has seen slums and unlicensed buildings spread
since the 2011 revolt.
With a population of about 90 million, and projected to exceed 120
million by 2050, and with many Egyptians living in sprawling slums, the
country is struggling to build enough houses for the poorest in society.
So many people live in a network of tombs in Cairo that the area has
become known as the City of the Dead.
Housing Minister Mustafa Madbouly told Reuters Egypt needed to build
500,000-600,000 new homes a year to keep up with demand, 70 percent of
which should be aimed at the poor. The social housing project will see
200,000 new homes built each year, meeting over half the annual demand
for cheap housing.
Private developers, who have built new suburbs around Cairo, are
meeting the needs of middle and higher income Egyptians who can buy
homes outright or obtain mortgages.
Egypt is financing its social housing scheme through land sales to
developers building higher-end homes, Madbouly said. "This is totally
being implemented by the Egyptian government and the ministry of housing
with a total investment that exceeds 150 billion Egyptian pounds
($19.16 billion)," he said on the sidelines of the Egypt Mega Projects
conference.
"We are making use of the projects we are offering to the private
sector to finance and cross-subsidise the social housing programme."
Mammoth task
Madbouly said he was also working to upgrade informal settlements,
which comprise 40-50 percent of urban areas, and to bring 24-hour piped
water to all homes within three years. Three percent of Egyptian
households have no running water at all and in rural areas some homes
receive water for only 12 hours a day.
Madbouly also plans to bring sewage treatment to 50 percent of rural
areas, up from 15 percent now. "(We are) upgrading slums and unsafe
areas. We are talking here about 248 areas ... 150,000 families,"
Madbouly said.
But Madbouly faces a mammoth task. Egypt's population is squeezed
into a narrow strip of land along the banks of the Nile, the river delta
and the Mediterranean coast. The rest of the country is largely desert.
