Tumbling down

The collapse of four buildings in one week brings into sharper focus the necessity of amending present housing laws, writes Dena Rashed
Within a period of less than two weeks after the tragic train accident on the Cairo-Aswan route, Egypt has been confronted with the collapse of four buildings within one week.
The first incident took place in Damietta, 198km north of Cairo on 26 February. Out of the 22 who were buried under the rubble were three brides who were in the process of being groomed for their wedding at the ground-floor hairdresser. Several demolition orders had been served to the building's owners since 1994, but disagreement on whether the building was to be restored or demolished led to prolonged foot- dragging which paved the way to the disaster. Although the building's residents had already been evicted, the beauty parlour was full of women and children waiting for the brides-to-be to be made ready.
Two days later, on 28 February, a woman died and her four children were injured following the collapse of a building in El-Menufiyya province.
On the same day, six members of the same family died and three were injured when their building collapsed at 6am in Mansoura, 132km north of Cairo in the Daqahliyya governorate.
"They knew that the house was going to collapse," Abdel-Halim Osman, a relative, told Al- Ahram Weekly. "They tried to find another place to stay but couldn't, and finally came back to the building. It was a refuge for a family that had nowhere else to go," he said.
A demolition order for the building was served in 1977 but the owners never carried it out.
In El-Hosnyia, where the building was situated, there are several other ramshackle structures in the streets and residents fear that they are likely to collapse sooner or later. Abdou El- Dessouki, the owner of a shop next to the collapsed building, is well aware that the building which hosts his shop may fall at any moment. "Several eviction orders have been issued owing to the building's bad state, but I won't leave my shop because I can by no means buy or even rent a new one," he said.
Many residents of the area know which buildings are likely to collapse. Hanafi Mahmoud, the owner of a small grocery shop a few metres away from the collapsed building, works every day under a three-storey building whose dilapidated appearance bodes ill. "The whole area's buildings were built a long time ago and it is well-known by everyone in the district that many of them are expected to fall, which is why nobody constructs new buildings in this area," he added.
Lacking the option of moving out of their disintegrating homes, many of the present residents interviewed by the Weekly in El-Hosnyia face an anxious future.
Hassan Ibrahim, another shop tenant in the same street, told the Weekly that the owner of the building in which his shop was located could not afford to carry out repairs, thus leaving it as it was, risking collapse. "He would not repair the house and told us that he would wait until it falls down naturally," he said.
On 1 March, another building collapsed in Mansoura. Fortunately, its residents were only injured, the majority through jumping from the building's fourth floor.
According to the report filed by the Daqahliyya governorate, compensation will be paid to the victims of the collapsed buildings. Families of the deceased are due to receive LE5,000 for each deceased person while the injured are to get LE1,000 each. However, the fundamental problem for the surviving, currently homeless families is where to find shelter.
Although the governorates make an effort to provide stricken families with shelter, the rising numbers of buildings due for demolition renders this an increasingly difficult task.
In Cairo governorate alone, 50 total demolition and 20 partial demolition orders have been issued for the year 2002. However, the numbers of actually executed orders are unavailable from the governorate.
Out of Cairo's 30 neighbourhoods, only 21 have submitted the information needed on their buildings' status, a factor that further complicates the process of coming up with the total number of buildings in need of repair or due for demolition. In Cairo's eastern district alone, 2,997 demolition orders were issued for the year 2001 but only 338 orders -- a mere 11 per cent -- were executed.
As Mansoura resident Mohamed Moustafa puts it, "It became known that if a building needed repairs, its owner usually refrained from acting as, by law, he would have to cover the costs instead of the tenants. So, what usually happens is that he waits until the needed repairs are so drastic that the structure has to be demolished. On the other hand, when a demolition order is issued, the residents can make an appeal to the court, and the owner is happy to demolish the house so that he can sell the land later on and get some real money instead of the low rents he receives," he said.
Planning expert Milad Hanna believes that one of the basic obstacles against renovating old buildings is the very low rents that the residents pay their landlords. "In 1978, I proposed a law that would raise the rents of old houses so that the landlords can use the extra revenue to make the necessary repairs. That law, however, was never passed," he said.
Another option that residents have is to sign a declaration stating their full responsibility for their housing, thus releasing the governorate from its responsibilities towards them.
Hanna believes that such a declaration only worsens the situation, besides the fact that the law does not recognise this action. "Each district has the power to oblige residents to vacate their buildings since, in the end, it is their responsibility not to allow residents to live in such buildings," Hanna added.
The deputy of the Housing Committee in the People's Assembly, Mohamed El-Morshedi, told the Weekly that the law was still under consideration. "We have been studying the law concerning raising the rents for quite a while and we don't even want to discuss it in parliament until we are sure that no social imbalance would occur," he said.
"Besides, we are planning to propose a regulation that could serve the victims of collapsed buildings," he added. The regulation would require the residents of all buildings to pay a certain amount of money each month in order to have a regular fund for assisting victims of collapsed buildings in finding alternative shelters.
However, given that the proposed law to raise the rents of the old houses has been delayed for almost 25 years, it remains difficult to imagine the passing of such a law in the People's Assembly any time in the near future.
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