Threats, assaults and, in some cases, killings have accompanied disputes over homes rented under Egypt’s longstanding rent-control system. Accounts collected in this report describe landlords seeking possession or higher rents, tenants resisting eviction, and families caught between legal change and a housing market they cannot afford.
These individual cases illustrate the dangers of escalating housing disputes. They do not, on their own, establish a national increase in crime or prove that a particular law caused each incident.
The controversy intensified after the Supreme Constitutional Court’s November 2024 ruling against provisions that kept annual rents fixed under Law 136 of 1981. Parliament subsequently passed new legislation, ratified in August 2025, setting a timetable for ending the tenancies covered by the reform.
The population potentially affected should not be confused with the number of rental contracts. Estimates cited in the Arabic report refer to approximately 1.6 million households, or 6.3 million people, living in old-rent housing.
Disputes that turned violent
A report published by Masrawy in August 2025 described an engineer who fatally stabbed a landlord’s son during a confrontation over an old-rent apartment. The account linked the confrontation to attempts by the owner’s heirs to remove or pressure the tenant. The date of a court report should not be treated as the date of the underlying crime.
In Helwan in May, a tuk-tuk driver was reportedly killed while defending an elderly woman, a relative of his father, in a dispute over an old-rent apartment. According to the account cited in the Arabic report, the woman faced eviction threats from the landlord and one of his sons; the driver intervened and was fatally stabbed.
That month, residents of a building in Kerdasa, Giza, filed a police complaint accusing their landlord of deliberately setting fire to the entrance and lower floors. They alleged that the intention was to frighten them and create a pretext for declaring the building unsafe. These are allegations reported in the complaint, rather than findings established by this investigation.
Violence has also been directed against owners. In Mansoura in July, an elderly woman who owned a residential building and her two daughters were reportedly assaulted by tenants during a rental dispute. The account described a tenant closing the entrance to prevent the mother from leaving, then striking her; her daughters were beaten and dragged when they intervened.
In Kerdasa in August, a confrontation between an apartment owner, his tenant and others reportedly involved a shotgun and sharp weapons, leaving five people injured. A separate account from Cairo’s Zawiya al-Hamra described a tenant striking the landlord’s son with an iron bar, causing a permanent disability after repeated disputes over possession of the apartment.
In al-Maasara, another report alleged that a landlord poured petrol over a tenant and set him alight following a financial disagreement over rent.
In September, a 73-year-old man and members of his family in Dar al-Salam, Cairo, reportedly suffered an assault involving a knife by the landlord’s son. The family said the attack was intended to force them out of their old-rent apartment. The Arabic article refers to this same complaint more than once; it should not be counted as two separate incidents.
Local media also carried a woman’s appeal after she said her landlords beat her in an attempt to evict her before the end of a 59-year lease. The length of a contract alone does not establish that it falls under the old-rent statutory regime, so that case should not automatically be classified as an old-rent tenancy.
In October, an elderly tenant in Suez’s Ganayen district was reportedly slapped by his landlord amid a dispute over rent and attempts to remove the family. A student with a physical disability in Shubra al-Kheima alleged that her landlord and his relatives repeatedly threatened and abused her and her mother, and cut their water and electricity to pressure them to leave.
Egyptian-American Karim Turki also posted an appeal on social media concerning his late father’s old-rent apartment on King Faisal Street in Giza. He alleged that the owners assaulted him and attempted to damage the apartment’s ceiling.
Reported incidents by governorate
| Governorate | Incidents shown in the Arabic graphic |
|---|---|
| Cairo | 4 |
| Giza | 3 |
| Dakahlia | 1 |
| Suez | 1 |
| Qalyubia | 1 |
Source: the Arabic article’s compilation of newspaper accounts from November 2024 to late October 2025. These are selected reported incidents, not population-adjusted crime rates or a complete police dataset. Its separate time-series graphic repeats month labels and does not identify each observation clearly; an exact monthly series cannot be reliably reconstructed from it.
How many households are exposed?
The report cites the 2017 census as recording approximately 3.02 million units under the old-rent system, about 7% of Egypt’s property units. The figures cited include 1.88 million residential units, 575,000 commercial units and around half a million closed units. These classifications should not be assumed to be mutually exclusive without consulting the underlying census definitions.
Households in old-rent units: the largest governorate totals
| Governorate | Households |
|---|---|
| Cairo | 670,860 |
| Giza | 308,090 |
| Alexandria | 213,150 |
| Qalyubia | 150,960 |
Figures reproduced from the Arabic graphic, whose values are expressed in thousands. The shares given in the accompanying text for Cairo, Giza and Alexandria are 41%, 18.7% and 12.9%. Together they total 72.6%, approximately 73%, rather than the 82% stated in that text.
The statistics cited in the report suggest that roughly a third of households paid less than EGP 50 a month, around 20% paid EGP 50–100, and 19% paid EGP 100–200. Other households paid amounts ranging from EGP 200 to more than EGP 900. The rounded percentages and household counts in the cited account do not reconcile exactly, so they should not be used to derive an additional precise total.
A threat to social security
Political sociology professor Saeed Sadek warns that many tenants will struggle to meet their new housing costs. Disagreements could lead to prolonged litigation and, in some cases, violence, he tells Zawia3.
For households facing the end of their tenancies, the seven-year transition can become a period of sustained uncertainty. Sadek describes residents living with one foot inside their home and the other outside, unable to determine where they will live next or find a viable alternative at prevailing prices.
“Housing is not a luxury that can be dispensed with; it is one of life’s essentials,” Sadek tells Zawia3.
Forced relocation, he argues, involves much more than changing an address. It can destabilise family life, sever familiar social ties and intensify class tensions. Elderly residents and families without alternative accommodation are particularly vulnerable to the anxiety of losing their main source of security.
Those with sufficient resources may negotiate new leases or absorb higher rents. Pensioners, patients and people on low incomes are less likely to have those options. The quality of the landlord–tenant relationship matters too: threats or the involvement of hired intimidators can turn an already difficult financial negotiation into a dangerous confrontation.
Sadek places the housing dispute against a wider backdrop of inflation, currency depreciation and rising food and medicine costs. He also cites increased demand for housing after people fleeing Sudan’s war arrived in Egypt as one pressure on the rental market. This is his assessment of market conditions, not evidence that refugees are responsible for individual eviction disputes or assaults.
He criticises housing decisions that neglect their social consequences and leave vulnerable residents without protection. In his view, decades of rent freezes and subsequent economic decline have created burdens for both owners and tenants.
Moving to a cheaper district may mean entering an unfamiliar social and cultural environment. For families whose living standards have already declined, that adjustment can be painful. Sadek does not present violence as an inevitable outcome; his broader concern is widespread insecurity among households unable to afford an alternative.
What the law says—and where disputes arise
Adel Amer, director of the Egyptians Centre for Political, Legal and Economic Studies, links confrontations to disputes over the implementation of the reform. He points to uncertainty over early eviction, eligibility for alternative accommodation and the evidence needed to establish a tenancy.
Law 164 of 2025 provides a seven-year term for covered residential leases and five years for covered non-residential leases held by natural persons, unless the parties agree to end them earlier. Residential rents rise to twenty times the previous legal rent in premium areas, with a minimum of EGP 1,000; in middle and economic areas they rise tenfold, with minimums of EGP 400 and EGP 250 respectively. Annual increases are 15%.
The statute also permits earlier recovery where a unit has been closed for more than a year without justification, or where the tenant owns another unit suitable for the same use. It does not state a general requirement that the alternative property be in the same governorate. Where a tenant refuses to vacate, it provides a judicial procedure, rather than authorising an owner to use force. Applications for state-provided alternatives are addressed separately.
The rent floors above correct figures given in one interview passage in the Arabic article. Failure to register on the alternative-housing platform is not, by itself, identified in the law as a separate ground for immediate eviction.
Amer says classification committees and governorate decisions are central to determining the rent category for each area, while disputes over obligations can be taken to court. He expects some initial confrontations to subside as people adapt, but warns that police complaints, prosecution investigations and litigation can leave both sides worse off.
His preferred outcome is a negotiated agreement and a new lease at a fair rent. In his assessment, many landlords primarily want a meaningful increase in income rather than possession, although owners seeking to redevelop or sell properties may have different objectives.
A reform that critics say leaves both sides exposed
Housing researcher Murad Monir argues that the reform has not adequately restored owners’ rights or addressed distortions in the property market. He describes valuable units generating negligible rental income while some owners themselves face financial hardship.
Monir questions the practical capacity to enforce a large volume of evictions when the transition ends. The law does specify the termination period; his criticism concerns implementation and enforcement, rather than an absence of a statutory end date.
He also objects to applying the same broad transition to tenants with very different means. In his view, a household with assets or alternative accommodation should not receive the same protection as a pensioner who cannot afford another home.
Monir argues that the human need for housing does not justify rents remaining almost nominal indefinitely.
The consequences can extend to the next generation: children who cannot succeed to an old tenancy face the costs of a market-rate lease or purchase. Owners’ children may likewise be unable to benefit from family property tied up in longstanding tenancies.
Monir places the dispute in the history of exceptional rental legislation that survived long after the conditions in which it arose. His broader argument about the removal of exceptional laws should not be read as an established finding that an international treaty requires Egypt to abolish rent control.
He says some owners are paying tenants to leave before the statutory period expires, creating a market for negotiated surrender payments, commonly described as khulou. Such negotiations do not mean that tenants have no existing contractual or statutory rights.
His proposed alternative is a faster end to the old relationship, accompanied by state-funded support targeted through a clear assessment of need. That could include social housing or direct assistance, rather than requiring individual landlords to bear the cost of protecting tenants for another seven years. This remains his policy position, distinct from the rules currently in force.
Between the owners’ demand for a return on their property and tenants’ fear of losing their homes, the dispute has become a question of social security. The reported assaults show what can happen when disagreement is pursued through intimidation and force. A transition that protects vulnerable households and preserves lawful routes for resolving disputes is central to preventing housing uncertainty from turning into deeper harm.
