Commentary: New ways of thinking...

As the collapse of a residential building in Alexandria tragically illustrates the slogan remains without substance, writes Abdel-Moneim Said*

---

The recent collapse of a residential building in the Loran district of Alexandria was one more tragedy to add to the growing list. Not long ago a ferryboat sank in the Red Sea with more than 1,000 passengers on board.

Why have we become so accident prone?

It is easy to come up with sensationalist answers and I am sure many in the media will do just that. But it is perhaps time that we all did some soul searching, members of the public and of the government alike, and examine the economic and social policies we've been following for years now.

A few days ago, the columnist Salah Montasser took a close look at what happened in Loran. He pointed out that the residential building that collapsed was constructed without a building licence. When the municipality issued a demolition order the residents fought back and got a military order suspending the demolition.

So when disaster finally struck who exactly was to blame?

One guilty party, of course, is the state, which didn't give a licence building but then allowed it to remain by military decree. Then there are the residents who fought to keep a building deemed structurally unsafe standing. Then there are the rest of us, members of a society that prefers not to rock the boat even when the boat is sinking.

Currently 111,000 buildings are subject to demolition orders in Egypt though few are likely to be pulled down given that court orders for demolition are routinely ignored. Where will the residents go is the usual heartfelt cry, usually accompanied by questions along the lines of what evil government throws people out of their homes. Our collective answer to the problem appears to be better keep the roof over our heads until the roof falls in, which is tantamount to saying that the inhabitants of such buildings, whether poor or rich, are better off dead than homeless.

There are several obvious shortcomings to our adopting such a position. For starters, it erodes central authority, presenting the spectre of a state that fails to enforce its own building standards and a government that, while busying itself with a thousand other things, lacks the power to enforce any of its own rules. It represents a massive waste of resources and time, used to produce court rulings, eviction notices and decrees that are destined to be ignored. As a result, people do whatever they feel like doing, giving rise to the chaos we see all around. Across Egypt it is not just the occasional building but entire neighbourhoods that are erected outside the planning regime.

Why has the state's authority so disintegrated? Is Egypt not a country whose praises we endlessly sing, a state that we want to see gain greater influence regionally and internationally? Why then are so many of us, whose patriotism goes unquestioned, dare to breach the state's authority so carelessly?

To explain what is happening we must go back in time. Throughout huge stretches of Egyptian history housing was a personal matter. People built, or hired someone to build, their homes, with no need for government control. It was only when modern regulations were introduced under the Mohamed Ali dynasty that the state began to assume responsibility for urban planning.

In the late 1960s, Lutfi El-Kholi wrote a popular play, Case 1968, from which many people remember the line "Shall I open the window or close it?" The play tells the story of a man who adds a window in his building without planning permission. When he was fined for adding the window he had it bricked up only to be fined again. He might have been left in a quandary what to do but he was sure of one thing, the state was intent on enforcing its regulations. This is no longer true. Today the man wouldn't have anything to worry about.

But even in El-Kholi's time Egypt's bureaucracy had started to shoot itself in the foot. The first problem appeared when the government said it was responsible for housing everyone in the country. It introduced rent controls and began harassing landlords who suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of the law and viewed as a threat to social justice. People stopped investing in housing and buildings were no longer maintained. A major national resource -- Egypt's housing stock -- began to collapse and inevitably the people who pay the highest price are the poor, the very group rent controls sought to protect.

The state embarked on building housing schemes for the poorest, producing developments -- the first appeared in Ain Al-Sira -- that became, and remain, synonymous with misery and deprivation. As under most socialist regimes, though, the state's ability to build new homes failed to keep up with people's ability to have children. In the private sector landlords started asking for "key money" from prospective tenants, meaning that flats effectively became available only to buyers.

Provision of housing became a maze of complications and messy regulations. At a time when Egypt had seven currency exchange systems, six pilgrimage travelling plans, and when the state intervened in the production of ghee and the raising of chickens perhaps we should not be surprised that the housing market should have been turned into a multi-tier system with government housing, cooperative housing, random housing, private housing, housing controlled by religious endowments and housing run by the syndicates. Still the supply of homes fell short of demand.

Those who lost loved ones in Loran deserve our deepest sympathy. But real sympathy should take the form of deeds, not just words. We need to address the root of the problem and that is that the state has abandoned its main function with regard to housing. It should regulate not build. And having set the regulations it should enforce, not suspend them.

Is it asking too much for the state to do what it is qualified to do and stay away from tasks for which it is not qualified?

Apparently it is. Many of us still want the state to remain involved in the housing market, citing the needs of the poor. But it was the state's intervention that hurt the poor in the first place. The Loran tragedy cannot be fully addressed without a comprehensive revision of the way we approach problems. We all need to reconsider our positions, and I am not just talking about the National Democratic Party. I have heard many complaints about the tragedy in Loran and about recent ramshackle pilgrimage arrangements. Yet those who complain -- and they include many prominent intellectuals -- also call for more, not less, state intervention.

The state has already intervened in too many aspects of life that fall beyond its mandate. What we should be demanding is a new division of labour between society and the state. There are things that the state can and should do, and things it patently cannot.

* The writer is director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.