Housing is considered one of the necessities of life. Providing housing for society members can make them more eager to perform their roles efficiently. Housing provision can help reduce poverty, divorce, and slums and consequently, reduce crime and violence rates. The lack of housing may lead to a situation whereby citizens tend to encroach and build on agricultural lands. Therefore, in many countries, governments often provide housing for the people, especially for the low-income class. This is often called social housing and described in various ways as low-cost housing, economic housing, low-income housing, youth housing, low-profit housing, non-profit housing, protected housing, and public housing, etc. The definition varies from one country to another and according to the administrative authorities.
In Egypt, social housing programmes are considered one of the most important means to overcome the housing problems given the rising population amidst high unemployment, poverty rates and spread of slums. This paper aims to evaluate the experiences and performance of government housing initiatives in Egypt between 2005 and 2017 to provide social housing to the people. Such two programmes, namely, the "National Housing Programme" and the "Social Housing Programme" undertaken in recent years, are considered. The literature of relevant official documents and other sources are reviewed to ascertain the success of social housing policy in providing housing for the low-income class. The conclusions and recommendations based on the study suggest that policymakers should implement optimal social housing policy planning.