My friend, you sound like a prime candidate for Cairo's Wust-Al-Balad (downtown) area. The vast urban stretch between Tahrir and Ramsis Squares is full of inexpensive hotels and hostels that range in quality from charmingly run-down to truly seedy. The area is vintage Cairo -- vibrant, noisy and polluted, and features some very interesting architecture to boot. It also has enough of a steady foreigner presence that I would definitely count it as English-friendly. My best advice to you would be to just show up downtown and start asking around. If you're looking for a slightly more isolated form of English-friendly, the Nile island of Zamalek is home to a bustling foreign population -- although not much there would qualify as moderately priced.