The 1995/1996 Household Income, Expenditure - (PDF, 101 mb ...

VI.4
often two or more floors, with a big room downstairs having a high ceiling.
People sleep downstairs, and the big room is usually devoted to guests, and
used for celebrations. In times past livestock were kept inside the housing
compound in a room separated from the sleeping quarters; now they are
mostly kept outside.
Practical possibilities for housing no longer can afford to uphold
tradition, and this urban/rural characterization is obviously incomplete, as are
all generalizations. Cairene housing, for example, is as diverse as the
distribution of wealth, and thereby the access to free space, allows. However,
with more than 75,000 people per square mile in some areas (Theroux, (1993),
no one would dispute that a large part of the city is overcrowded and cannot
support additional growth. Substandard housing arises with the need to
shelter the vast numbers; tragedy can result from overcrowding - for example,
it is estimated that at least half of the 600 lives lost in the earthquake of
October, 1992 were due directly to overcrowding and poor construction. The
Northern and Southern Cemeteries, collectively known as the "City of the
Dead," are vast, notorious redoubts of "creative homelessness." On the other
side of the tracks, figuratively and literally, are the splendid villas of Ma'adi
and Nasr City, where the rich cavort and compete in shows of capitalistic
excess. In contrast to the noisy, polluted, streets of crowded Cairo, the rural
areas can be idyllic, quiet and sedate. Yet the lure of the city remains
overwhelming, and the city continues to find room for its internal migrants.
VI.C Analysis Using 1990/1991 HIECS Data
VLC.1 Rent Control
The literature on rent control is broad and well-documented. 2 Much
work on rental services costs in developing countries has focussed on
assessing the components of demand under competitive conditions with strict
distinctions between landlords and tenants. I make neither of those
traditional assumptions. The contribution of this section is in using hedonic
techniques on the 1990/1991 HIECS data to recover implicit prices at one point
in time, and applying these to a comparison of two possibly separate markets.
A snapshot of marginal prices for housing services from hedonic regressions
is obviously limited evidence for making inferences about the effects of rent
control. However, quality adjustment does explain the observed and
unexpected difference in nominal values in two renter markets. It also
informs a discussion about how different renters value various housing
characteristics, and it might indicate how past and present policy has brought
the housing market to this point.
This section is organized as follows: first I summarize the legal aspects
of landlord/tenant relations in Egypt from the last 30 years; then follows a
2 Olson's article (1972) is a seminal study. Arnott (1995) provides a
survey of past and recent research on housing markets under various rent
control regimes. Under World Bank auspices, and specifically in Egypt,
Malpezzi ((1984); (1993); and Mayo (1987); et. aJ. (1988); and Ball (1991»
concentrate on the detailed comparative statics of costs and benefits for
landlords and tenants. .