I received
many comments over what I wrote last week about old-lease residential units and
old-lease law governing the owner-tenant relationship. Honestly, I didn’t
expect to find among those who cared and commented some of my friends and
colleagues whom, like me, are regarded to be leftist. I saw how unbiased and
just they were even if some others may think what they said does belong to the
right-wing ideology.
For
example, Mr. Moustafa Hammam the accountant wrote: “In the beginning, I used to
side with tenants against owners; a childish revolutionary stance not based on real
experience. That was until the company I work in bought one of the biggest
buildings of Qasr ad-Dobara in Garden City neighborhood. The building is
called Isis. I received the papers of this building and went into one of its apartments.
I swear the apartment was very spacious to the extent that I lost my way out of
it. During that time, the lease-value of very small apartments that are not
supplied with all services reached 200 pounds. I looked at the papers of Isis’s
spacious apartments and found out that some of the tenants rent them furnished
for thousands of pounds; meaning one apartment is rented for higher than 47 double
times the small ones. After this, I changed my opinion, and my stance towards
tenants turned into an aggressive one, to the extent that a mentor of mine, whom
I learnt a lot from, blamed me for my actions. Actually, my newly-adopted stance
was not only due to the poor-value lease money paid but also because I found
out that those tenants have very strong connections in the official entities. For
example, the head of the police station was very afraid of the tenants because
one of them was a relation to then-minister Botros Ghali. The same thing happened
in electricity, land-line telephone companies and other ones. I cancelled contracts
renting the apartments furnished unless under my own permission. My convictions
changed to the degree that some of those who stick rigidly to what is written
in the books accused me of abandoning my beliefs.”
Dr.
Mounir Megahed, the nuclear scientist, wrote two lines saying: “Although I live
in an old-lease apartment in an almost working-class neighborhood, I do agree
to what you said in your article.”
Dr.
Muhammed Farrag Abu en-Nour wrote a long and interesting comment suggesting
solutions for the problem. I excerpt part of what he wrote. He said: “The idea
is new and really well-founded. However, we should take into consideration how
constitutional it is to terminate old lease in high-class neighborhoods and keep
it in the neighborhoods of middle and working classes, paying attention that
the latter have many buildings whose owners built them to secure their children
against what might happen to them in the future.
Also,
if we gave the owner and tenant the freedom to define the relationship binding
them, there will be big social troubles, as there will be rich people in possession
of apartments of poor lease-value, while there are old and widowed men and women
living in similar apartments but have no income and no one to support them. Therefore,
I suggest that we think of a gradual solution that will not result in big
revenues but will guarantee obeying the law and not causing harm to anyone by
this new law just because of a greedy exploiting bunch.
For
example, we should terminate the lease in case the tenant is using the apartment
for purposes other than residing personally in it, as there are thousands of
apartments, owned by public companies like Heliopolis Company, the ministry of
endowments and insurance companies, in the capital Cairo, Alexandria and other
big cities, that are rented furnished by their tenants for thousands of pounds.
Also, if it was proved that the tenant no longer stays in the apartment and has
another place to stay in, then the lease must be cancelled. As to the rest of
the apartments, a real estate tax should be levied on them and revenues should
be allocated to the social housing fund in order to build housing units for
those who need them and who will leave their old-lease apartments in the
working-class neighborhoods.
In parallel,
an annual increase convenient to the value of the old lease should be
considered in order to be fair towards the old tenants. All that requires true
hard work and serious scrutiny by the state entities and its legal departments
in order to quickly provide the necessary resources funding the social housing
so that we can have a gradual solution and not a paralyzing one. In doing so,
we will guarantee not having big social troubles and not contravening the
constitution.”
The
three comments mentioned above are to people who, as I said before, belong to a
cultural ideology totally in favor of the broad working-class masses, or what
we call the Egyptian Left, which proves that in case the tackling approach is
right and the vision is impartial, the adopted stance is more close to being
right.
I also
received a comment by e-mail from engineer Mr. Moustafa Abdelaal. He is from
Port Said. He started his comment saying: “God bless you and damn all unjust
ones,” then he cited seven texts from Quran; verse 58 of An-Nisa Chapter, verse
188 of Al-i-Imran Chapter, verse 104 of Al-Kahf Chapter, verses 85 and 188 of
Al-Baqara Chapter, the beginning of Al-Mutaffifin Chapter and verse 183 of
Ash-Shu’ara Chapter. Then he said that repealing the old-lease law will lead to
a strategic shift in the Egyptian economy that no one can expect, adding that
this will lead to achieving justice, equality, reducing burdens over the
jurisdiction system, demolishing slum areas completely, having all the society
above poverty level and fulfilling what Allah and his prophet said.
Mr.
Abdelaal presented a lengthy suggestion saying that state properties alone
represented in the property owned by the ministry of endowments are estimated
to be of billion pounds worth. If such property were rented with a 7 percent
annual increase, the revenue will be 70 billion pounds annually.
He gave
details of the steps that should be taken in order to achieve such thing,
saying that there are about five million old-lease residential units. If such leases
were revalued and a tax of about 30 percent was imposed yearly, expected
revenues of twelve billion pounds will be raised annually. Moreover, if every
owner paid a sum of money, say ten thousand pounds, in exchange for taking his
apartment back, this will yield a revenue of about fifty billion pounds,
meaning providing 120 billion pounds for the fund supporting the tenants in
need.
Now,
I believe it’s time for the parliament to start having an open thorough discussion
to come up with a solution for this dilemma and not making use of the needs of
the poor to justify more looting by the greedy.
Translated
into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in Almasry alyoum newspaper
on February 1, 2017.
To see the original article, go to:
#almasry_alyoum #ahmed_elgammal #old_lease_law_in_Egypt
#housing
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