Violent crimes linked to the enforcement of evictions from “old rent” properties have recently escalated following the amendment of the law, ranging from threats and verbal or physical assaults, with some reaching the commission of murder or attempted murder, against the backdrop of landlords’ desire to expel tenants or raise the rental value of residential units.
The Supreme Constitutional Court ruled in November 2024 that the first paragraph of each of Articles 1 and 2 of Law 136 of 1981 on old rent, which kept the annual rent fixed without adjustment, was unconstitutional. A wide controversy followed, and the pace of disputes between property owners and tenants escalated, with some turning into violent crimes.
Days after the ruling, the son of a property owner was killed by an engineer, a tenant under the old law, after a violent fight broke out following an attempt by the owner’s heirs to evict the tenant by force or to harass him; the latter stabbed the owner’s son with a pocketknife, causing his death. But the incident was only the first link in a chain of similar violent crimes that 2025 witnessed, as a “tuk-tuk” driver was killed in Helwan last May for defending an elderly woman (a relative of his father) during a dispute over a flat rented under the “old rent” system.
The woman was being threatened with eviction by the property owner and one of his sons, so the victim got into an altercation to defend her, but he was stabbed with knives and died of his injuries. During the same month, residents of a building in the Kerdasa district of Giza filed a police report accusing the owner of deliberately setting fire to the building’s entrance and lower floors to threaten them and to fabricate the pretext that his building, rented under the old rent system, was “unsafe”, in order to force them to vacate.
The pace of these crimes quickly escalated with Parliament’s approval, by a majority, of the amendments to the law, which Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi ratified last August. It provided for a gradual increase in rental value and gave tenants a grace period of 7 years to vacate residential units, which raised fears of mass eviction among 6 million tenants, according to estimates.
Last July, an elderly woman and her two daughters were assaulted by tenants at the entrance of the residential building she owns in the city of Mansoura in Dakahlia Governorate, over a rental dispute, as the tenant locked the building’s door to prevent the mother from going out, then beat her when she tried to go out to collect the rubbish, and her two daughters were also beaten and dragged along the ground as they intervened to defend her. In August, a violent fight broke out in the Kerdasa area of Giza Governorate, in which a shotgun pistol and sharp instruments were used, between the owner of a flat and its tenant, who was accompanied by others, over the owner’s attempt to evict the tenant, resulting in the injury of 5 people, including the owner and the tenant.
During the same month, a tenant in the El-Zawya El-Hamra district of Cairo struck the son of the property owner on the head with a piece of iron, causing him a permanent disability, after repeated disputes and mutual threats over the owner’s desire to recover the flat. In another incident, a property owner in the El-Maasara area poured (petrol) on a tenant and set him on fire over financial disputes about the rental value.
In September 2025, a 73-year-old man and members of his family were attacked with a bladed weapon by the son of the owner of the building in which they live in the Dar El-Salam area of Cairo, in a harsh attempt to force them to leave the flat they rent under the old rent system.
Local newspapers also reported a plea for help from a woman who was beaten by the owners of the building in which she lives in one of the flats under the old rent system, in an attempt to throw her out of the flat even though her contract, whose rental term is 59 years, had not expired, while an elderly man filed a complaint in which he accused the son of the owner of the building he has rented for years of trying to force his family to leave the flat through violence and constant threats; according to the complaint, the owner resorted to pressure tactics, including physical assault.
By last October, an elderly tenant living in an old-rent flat in the El-Ganayen district of Suez Governorate was slapped by the property owner over disputes with the owner about the rent and the latter’s attempt to force the family to vacate the residential unit. Media outlets also circulated a plea for help from a female student with a physical disability who lives with her mother in a flat under the “old rent” system in Shubra El-Kheima; she accused the owner and members of his family of daily threats and verbal and physical insults against her and her mother, and of cutting off their water and electricity in an attempt to terrorise them and push them to vacate.
An Egyptian-American citizen named Karim Turki, who lives in his late father’s flat on King Faisal Street in Giza, rented under the old rent system, also posted a video plea for help on social media after he was beaten by the owners of the building and they attempted to smash the flat’s ceiling.
According to the 2017 census, there are about 3.02 million property units subject to the old rent system in Egypt, representing 7% of the total property units in the country. Of these, 1.88 million units are used for housing, while 575,000 units are used for commercial purposes, and there are about half a million other units that are closed.
According to data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), Cairo alone accounts for 670,000 households (about 41%), Giza 308,000 households (18.7%) and Alexandria 213,000 households (12.9%), and these three governorates make up nearly 73% of the total households benefiting from old rent contracts.
According to the statistics, a third of the households renting under old rent contracts, or about 600,000 households, pay rents of less than EGP 50 a month, while 20% of households, or 327,000 households, pay rents ranging between EGP 50 and EGP 100 a month. Households whose monthly rents rise to between EGP 100 and EGP 200 represent 19% of households, or 307,000 households, and the remaining third of households pay rents ranging from EGP 200 to more than EGP 900 a month.
A threat to social security
Dr Saeed Sadek, professor of political sociology, warns of the wide social repercussions of the new old rent law, stressing that a large segment of tenants will not be able to adapt to the new rent obligations, which may lead to disputes ranging from amicable disagreements to violence, or to lengthy lawsuits between landlords and tenants.
He points out that the expiry of the seven-year period granted by the law puts families under enormous psychological pressure, as many tenants live in a state of insecurity that he describes as “one foot inside the house and one foot outside it”, unable to determine their housing future or find a suitable alternative at current prices, which he considers “unrealistic”. He stresses that the search for alternative housing will be accompanied by daily battles, whether with landlords or in the rental market, amid an unprecedented rise in prices.
He tells Zawia3: “Housing is not a luxury that can be done without; it is one of life’s basics. A person needs walls to shelter him, and forced moving from one home to another means a harsh social and living change that may topple the stability of families and put society in a state of class clash.” He stresses that the fear of losing one’s home will create a state of social insecurity, since the home is the individual’s first source of security, and losing it leads to severe pressure and anxiety, which may in some cases reach turmoil within families, especially among the elderly or families that have no housing alternatives.
He adds that only limited groups will get through this stage calmly: those who have the financial capacity and can pay the new rent or negotiate early with landlords to conclude new contracts. The most vulnerable groups, such as pensioners, the sick and those on limited incomes, will face harsh psychological and social pressures because of their inability to bear the new cost of housing.
Here, the professor of political sociology believes that the nature of the relationship between landlord and tenant will be a decisive factor; some landlords may resort to threats or hire thugs, which opens the door to serious social problems, stressing that the accumulated pressures, from price inflation, the fall in the value of the currency and the rising costs of food and medicine, will multiply the state of general tension in Egyptian society.
He notes that previous experiences, such as the wave of rising demand for housing following the influx of Sudanese refugees into Egypt because of the war, showed how pressure on the rental market can push some landlords to evict tenants in exchange for higher financial offers, which forced many Egyptian families to leave their homes. He points out that the spread of this crisis across the whole republic and in large governorates will make the situation more complicated, especially as it coincides with suffocating economic burdens.
Sadek explains that decisions related to housing lack a social dimension and lean towards a “savage neoliberal” capitalist logic, as he described it, which leaves vulnerable groups to their fate without protection.
He believes the roots of the crisis go back decades, starting with the era of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser, which saw a broad freezing of rents, creating distorted conditions that continued for decades and have today become a burden on landlords and tenants alike. He points out that the long economic deterioration and the shrinking of the middle class, which has slipped from an upper middle class to a lower middle class, will make social adaptation more difficult; moving to cheaper areas means entering culturally and socially different environments, causing psychological shocks and challenges in adapting.
He points out that the possibility of crimes linked to these pressures remains, but it is not the only outcome; what is certain, in his view, is that society will face widespread suffering and deep social anxiety, especially among groups that have no housing alternative and cannot keep up with the wave of rising rents.
Eviction attempts that led to violence
In the same context, Dr Adel Amer, director of the Egyptians Center for Political, Legal and Economic Studies, explains that the violent crimes society has witnessed in recent months came after the amendments to the old rent law were officially issued and entered into force, pointing out that the law set two conditions for immediate eviction, which caused direct friction between landlords and tenants.
He tells Zawia3: “The first condition is leaving the rented premises for a full year from the date the law was issued, which caused widespread confusion as some believed the period is calculated from before the law took effect, while application is immediate and not retroactive. The second condition concerns proof that the tenant owns another property within the area or governorate, and in this case the judge of urgent matters issues a ruling for immediate eviction and the handing over of the premises to the landlord. Some incidents of violence resulted from the announcement of these rulings before the start of forced enforcement procedures”.
Amer adds that many tenants did not apply to the electronic platform set up for the seven-year transition period, either because they do not have documents proving the rental relationship, or because of cases of “circumvention” such as the tenancy being extended to individuals who are not entitled to the legal extension, which left them exposed to immediate evictions. He points out that the rental value under old rent had been fixed since 1942, while the new law set a minimum for values according to areas: EGP 250 for economic areas, EGP 400 for middle-class areas and EGP 1,000 for upscale areas, with annual increases for seven years, provided that compliance with these values is monitored through the ordinary judiciary and not the executive authority, as any party has the right to resort to the courts when harm occurs.
Amer stresses that the responsibility of the administrative authority is limited to dividing areas into three tiers by a decision of the governor published in the Official Gazette, and to managing the electronic platform for registering to obtain an alternative unit for those who wish, on condition that the original premises are handed over as soon as the alternative is allocated.
Amer expects some incidents of violence to continue at first until tenants adapt to the provisions of the law, pointing out that disputes will often end in police reports, prosecution investigations and referrals to the courts, which makes both parties losers. He considers the optimal solution to be mutual agreement between the two parties and the drawing up of new contracts at fair values, stressing that most landlords care more about moving the rental value than about eviction, with the exception of some old areas whose owners seek to rehabilitate the buildings and offer them under the new rent system or for sale.
A law that did not achieve justice
For his part, real estate expert Mourad Mounir, a researcher on housing issues in Egypt, believes that the old rent law No. 164 of 2025 has not achieved its declared goal of restoring rights to landlords or addressing distortions in the property market, describing the law as “a mere bubble” that has not borne real results. He explains that Egypt has huge unexploited real estate wealth, while some tenants still pay a few pounds or refrain from paying, even though the market value of these units is extremely high.
He points out that the new law has not clearly settled what will happen after the end of the seven-year period, nor how the expected evictions will be carried out, stressing that enforcing eviction by force on about 3 million units is practically impossible; a tenant who is not ready to leave will demand legal enforcement, while the enforcement apparatus does not have the capacity to deal with this volume of cases all at once.
Mounir also criticises the current law because it gives all tenants a single period (seven years for residential and five years for non-residential) and sets rental values that do not reflect reality (EGP 250, 400 or 1,000), increases he described as having no real effect on the situation of landlords who have been waiting for their rights for decades. He points out that the continuation of the current situation also affects tenants’ children, most of whom do not inherit the flats, so they find themselves forced to resort to new rent or ownership at exorbitant costs, noting that there are many cases of landlords living in difficult social conditions despite owning properties, because they are unable to benefit from them or collect their real value.
He tells Zawia3: “Distortions in the property market have reached a point where the real rent of a flat can reach tens of thousands a month, while a tenant in a similar flat pays only five pounds by virtue of the law, which is abnormal and unfair. The human need for housing does not mean it should be free or almost free indefinitely, and the continuation of old rental relationships in this form is irrational”.
The real estate expert explains that the public debate on old rent began in the 1980s, coinciding with Egypt’s signing of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which obliges the abolition of exceptional laws. Although the circumstances in which the original law was issued after the Second World War have disappeared, it continued to be applied and was subjected to further amendments that increased its imbalance.
He points out that the essence of the crisis concerns the economic and social capacity of the old tenant to bear the real costs of housing. Although there is no justification for continuing to protect shops and administrative units, the law has continued to treat all tenants equally, whether they are able or unable, residing in Egypt or living abroad, having alternatives or not.
He adds: “In practice, the law leads some landlords to pay tenants sums of money to persuade them to leave before the end of the legal period, which creates a new market for ‘key money’ even though the tenant has no original rights in it, pushing matters towards further distortion instead of fixing them. The legislation in its current form achieves neither justice for landlords nor relief for deserving tenants, and does not address the imbalance that has persisted for decades in the old rent system”.
He stresses that the correct solution should have been based on ending the rental relationship directly while providing government support only to those who deserve it, through clear mechanisms for verifying inability to pay, and providing social housing or direct support. He considered that the state avoided this option even though it would have achieved justice and restored balance to the market, stressing that the state is the party responsible for managing the effects of justice and redressing the harmed party, not making the landlord bear the burden of supporting the tenant for seven more years, which he considered “absurd” and “a law lacking intelligence”.
The successive incidents since the Supreme Constitutional Court ruling in November 2024, followed by the approval of the new legislative amendments in mid-2025, reveal a society experiencing one of its most complex housing and social crises in recent decades, amid widespread fears that hundreds of thousands of families will lose their homes, and the difficulty of finding alternatives in a market marked by an unprecedented rise in prices.
As disputes between landlords and tenants have widened over the past two years, the current scene emerges as an arena charged with daily tensions, ranging from simple disagreements over the rental value to incidents of physical and verbal violence, which in some cases have reached murder. The growing incidents of violence across various governorates, from Cairo, Giza and Dakahlia to Suez and Qalyubia, indicate that the crisis is no longer only legal or economic, but has turned into a crisis of social security that threatens the cohesion of relationships within society, in the absence of clear mechanisms for de-escalation or transitional solutions that take the most vulnerable groups into account.
