Integrated Housing Policies: The Availing and Prevention Roles

Housing is a central driver for social, environmental and economic development. When housing policies fail to meet the growingdemand on urban housing, various challenges evolve; most importantly growing areas of informal settlements. In Egypt, the 2014 Amended Constitution refers to the right to decent or “adequate” housing in Article 78. The housing stock in Egypt is produced by three main sectors: The public sector under various programs and agencies as monitored by MHUUC, the formal and informal private sectors. For the Public housing, the State implemented a number of projects aiming at providing youth and low-income groups housing such as the Free Housing Project, Family Housing Project, Youth Housing Project and Future Housing Project. During the period from 2005 till 2012, the MHUUC had implemented the National Project for Housing. Currently, The Egyptian government is adopting the Social Housing Program, in addition to another part for the families of medium income “Dar Masr”. Also there is a promotion of sites and services schemes for moderate income families “Ibni Beitak”. On the informal production side, Informal Settlements Development Facility (ISDF), in cooperation with Egypt's governorates, has counted and categorized informal areas during the period 2009-2013. In April 2010, the Cabinet approved the National Plan for Upgrading Unsafe Informal Settlements. Many pilot projects had been implemented in cooperation with international organizations such as the World Bank, GIZ and UN organizations. The session will align to the Arab Housing Strategy as a regional perspective, where additional experiences from Jordan, Iraq and Sudan will be presented to provide a comparative analysis and general recommendations on a successful housing policy. The session will additionally draw on the Egyptian Experience in addressing the challenge of unmet housing needs, and how the new housing strategy suggests to interfere with the current and new housing stock.