This individual is a guest contributor. MEI is not able to assist with contact requests.
Yahia Shawkat is co-founder and research coordinator of 10 Tooba | Applied Research on the Built Environment, where he focuses on mapping and policy research. Shawkat’s work includes the infographic book, Social Justice and the Built Environment | A Map of Egypt (in Arabic), and the Right to Housing Initiative documentaries. He has also analyzed housing policy and government projects in Egypt as well as mapped the building collapse phenomenon there, buildng the first database on collapses: egyptbuildingcollapse.org. Shawkat has also been housing rights officer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and consults on housing and built environment policy for the Bank Information Center (BIC). He regularly contributes to the local and foreign press, and blogs at ShadowMinistryofHousing.org.
Egypt's Deregulated Property Market: A Crisis of Affordability
What Egyptians call the azmit al-iskan—the housing crisis—is exemplified by the 1986 movie, Karakon fi-l-Shari‘a, or Prison in the Street. The film depicts a typical middle class family that, evicted from its condemned home, must resort to living in a horse-drawn caravan because a regular apartment is unaffordable. The “prison” in the title is a reference to the father’s numerous altercations with the police, who deem his attempts to make a home quasi-legal—not illegal, but also not legal.
