CAIRO — From the roof of the house in which he lives, Mohammed Hassan can see some of the city’s prized real estate. A five-star hotel sits in the distance, the towering Foreign Ministry building seems close enough to touch, and the Nile is a straight shot ahead.
The 27-year-old restaurant delivery driver shares the eight-room mud-brick home with his mother and three siblings.
And then there are the seven other families that also live there, each in one of the rooms. All of the at least 70 residents share a toilet that is basically a hole in the ground.
“You can call this a house, but you can’t say what we’re doing is living,” said Hassan, who makes 900 Egyptian pounds ($150) a month. “I wish I could move out, but I can’t afford it. . . . In Egypt, even dreams are expensive.”
This is the math of Egypt’s revolution: Seventy people, sharing one toilet, in an eight-room house in a slum that has more residents than the combined population of Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain.
It reflects the kind of conditions that, over years, fueled a build-up of resentment that led to the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak in February.
As Egypt charts a course forward to what many hope will be a democratic nation, officials face the daunting task of keeping the economy stable while undoing a legacy of corruption and cronyism widely seen as favoring companies and a minority of businessmen at the expense of millions of people such as Hassan.
For many in the country, property developers are justified targets, in part because they secured state land at cut-rate costs and then resold developed lots at exorbitant prices.
But some fear the companies — and the private sector in general — are becoming the victims of a witch hunt that will undercut growth and undermine the economy.
While a select few in the nation of 80 million lived in luxury, the overwhelming majority struggled to make ends meet. Unable to afford an apartment, young men delayed marriage and lived at home. Building a household or planning for the future were basics that seemed unattainable.
Gated communities in between Cairo and the desert became symbols of the Egypt that millions here viewed with the kind of resentment only envy can inspire.
Stucco villas, townhouses and roomy apartments front golf courses, including one designed by Greg Norman. The superstructure of what could easily be called a small city is being placed in an area where, just 10 years ago, a flat tire meant motorists were stranded for hours.
Prices in many of these areas start from near 1 million pounds ($168,134) and increase exponentially. Meanwhile, Hassan and the others in the house pay 8 pounds ($1.35) a month rent for each family.
A small two-room apartment in the Boulaq Abu el-Ela neighborhood in which Hassan lives can fetch 120,000 pounds ($20,176). It might as well cost 1 million, he says.
“There’s an element of mismatch,” said Ahmed Badrawi, business development director for SODIC, which is building the Allegria project that includes about 1,200 villas and townhouses surrounding a Norman-designed golf course. “The supply that’s available is not necessarily one that meets all the demand.”
Adel Abdel-Moneim, a 25-year-old plumber, recalls fixing some leaking pipes in a villa in one of the gated compounds built by the developers. The rainforest shower head alone cost more than he could hope to make in six months.
After fixing the leak, he said the owners quibbled over the 120 pounds ($20) he wanted to charge them.
For him, it is poetic justice that several former officials and businessmen are locked up in Cairo’s notorious Tora prison, along with Mubarak’s two sons.
“They robbed the country and left us living like animals,” he said.
But the problems go far beyond the companies, others say.
“You’re trying to provide services for 20 million people in a place that can only support half that,” said Wael Ziada, head of research at the Cairo-based Mideast investment bank EFG-Hermes. “Anyway you slice it or dice it, it’s impossible.”
