Demolishing dangerous and dilapidated residential buildings sounds like a good idea, but what is the reality for those evicted? "They came just one day before the eviction and told us to move out. They started throwing our furniture on the street. We had nowhere to go. We spent three nights in the streets," said Ihsan Ramadan, a victim of a government demolition order. Ramadan and 15 other families were the unfortunate residents of two apartment buildings in the Umm Al-Masryeen district of the Giza Governorate. Almost one and a half years ago the residents were surprised by district officials knocking on their doors demanding their immediate eviction from the building. In just 24 hours residents who had lived in the building for decades found themselves homeless. One elderly woman, Umm Amr, went on hunger strike for several days in protest. She was not just protesting for her own sake but also for the sake of her son and daughter who lived in the building with their spouses and children. "My mother's heart was very weak and she had to be moved to hospital, not that the officials cared," explained her son Amr. "Can you imagine what it felt like to be standing in the street, desperately trying to find a place for my mother, sister, wife and children to spend the night?" he asked angrily. According to Khaled Abdel-Hamid, field researcher at the Egyptian Centre for Housing Rights, the residents of Umm Al-Masryeen are not alone in their predicament. He said that demolition orders often leave a trail of victims in their wake long after the order has been executed. According to Abdel-Hamid, if a building in a high-income area collapses the event is used to fuel the propaganda machine. "Cases such as these are very high profile, and are usually all over the newspapers," explained Abdel-Hamid. "So the officials do their best and try to compensate the victims." But this is not the case in poorer areas. "Usually you just find a small headline saying that area so-and-so was demolished for development," explained Abdel-Hamid. Evicted tenants often find themselves waiting in a long line for alternative accommodation. Poorer citizens are treated almost as criminals, not victims, and are often refused housing for the most flimsy of reasons. "For example, a resident can be originally from Beni Sueif but has been living in Cairo for ten years. They tell him 'Your ID card says you're a Beni Sueif native, we are not obliged to provide you with a new home'." And when substitute housing is provided it is often in remote areas like the Al-Nahda, May, Badr and 6th of October satellite cities. "This destroys the social network in which these people have been living for years," explained Abdel-Hamid. "If you have lived in Dokki for 10 years, your whole life is probably there. Your job, family, schools, social contacts, everything." Social networks are so vital that in some cases the residents refuse to move out. "Often in circumstances like these the residents are asked to sign what we call the 'lease of death' in which they assume all responsibility for living in the building. This is a big joke," said Abdel-Hamid. And in many cases the demolition order is issued too late. "In Egypt we have the problem of deciding who will execute the demolition order," explained Abdel-Hamid. "Some say it's the police station. But then the station says it will not carry it out until alternative housing has been provided. So the residents go to the governorate, which then says that it cannot provide housing until the building has been demolished," explained Khaled. "So they go back and forth until the building collapses." In the case of the Umm Al-Masryeen in Giza residents were sent to a remote area in 6th of October City -- the somewhat misnamed Hope City. But their new homes had not been provided with utilities. "They took us from civilisation to a dump of ruins," said Ramadan. There are no telephone lines, electricity or water. The only ambulance has broken down. Furthermore, the day Al-Ahram Weekly visited the local doctor's surgery, the doctor was not there. "My five-year-old child has problems with his kidneys and there is nobody here to look after him," said Mona Ashraf, a resident. In addition to this the only public bus provided is also off the road, and residents have to walk for hours in the glaring sun to reach the first bus stop. "And then we have to pay the bus at least LE5 to reach civilisation. Where do we get the money? Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think, shall I use the money to buy food or shall I go visit my family downtown? It's either this or that. I don't have money for both," said Ramadan. The residents of Umm Al-Masryeen were even more shocked to find out that the government expected them to buy their apartments at the current market price. Each family is expected to pay LE75 a month for 40 years, which amounts to a total of LE48,000. "How can I pay this when my pension is LE60?" asked Ramadan. But the biggest surprise of all came when engineers found cracks in their new building, and declared them structurally unsound as well. "The officials told us that they demolished our buildings because they were hazardous," said Amr. "Why did they house us in buildings that are just as unsafe?" he asked. By Yasmine Fathy
