How The Pandemic Has Affected Turkish Housing Affordability
Introduction:
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in thousands of deaths and infected hundreds of thousands more (2021). Governments have put some measures in place to try to minimize the number of infected people from the disease. Since keeping mortality as low as possible, several nations have been applied lockdown restrictions. As a result of this, the COVID-19 pandemic is not only a health crisis but rapidly becoming an economic one too. According to the Work Bank data, each region experienced economic contractions, with Latin America by 7.2%, Europe and Central Asia by 4.7%, the Middle East and North Africa by 4.2%, Sub-Saharan Africa by 2.8%, and South Asia contracting by 2.7% (World Bank 2020).
As many countries are experiencing a recession, the historic increase in joblessness has been bought on (World Bank 2021). For example, the United States, the largest economy in the world, rapidly rose to 14.7% in April following the impact of the Pandemic, while the unemployment rate was 3.5% at the end of February in 2020 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data 2021). Although the devastating effects of the pandemic on the economy have also been felt in Turkey, the situation was different in Turkey.
In Turkey, even before the pandemic, the unemployment rate was reported in the May of 2019 as 12.8 (2019), with the addition of the pandemic to the already bad economic situation, it reached 13.4 in the July of 2020 (2020) despite of the fact that work termination has been banned for a period of three months in Turkey’s Covid-19 crisis, the labor force participation rate fell. Along with unemployment at historic highs, the housing crisis in the country, which has not been comprehensively addressed before, is getting worse.
Definition and measurement of the housing affordability:
Since the term is associated with multiple issues (i.e., housing quality, housing condition, housing costs, household income) and people who have different roles (i.e., tenant, owner), it is impossible to define housing affordability in a simple way. Similarly, a wide variety of methodological approaches has been used to measure it. Although there has been a growing scholarly concern for this problem, there is no agreed definition and measurement method of housing affordability in the literature.
Housing affordability in turkey: the problem from the past:
The global financial crisis that emerged in 2008 affected the housing policy of countries. They shifted their policies to be more liberal as international literature has increased. However, the process has not proceeded in this way in Turkey. Despite the negative economic climate affecting Turkey like other countries, it could neither has increased the interest of researchers in the affordability literature nor have significantly changed Turkish housing policy.
How the pandemic has affected Turkey:
The outbreak was triggered in December 2019 in China, then the virus continues to spread across the world, and it became pandemic. It has altered the socio-economic and health dimensions of many societies across the world. It has also affected Turkish socio-economic development negatively.
Conclusion:
The COVID-19 pandemic has put many people out of jobs by affecting countries’ economies negatively. There is no doubt that every segment of society has been affected by the pandemic. However, the pandemic hits low-income groups hardest. Turkey has experienced housing affordability as an unsolved problem. Since long before the pandemic, low-income individuals have been experiencing great levels of hardship regarding paying their housing expenditures Pandemic is bringing to light an existing housing crisis that the low-income group has experienced.
The survey was carried out on 150 households who are living in Ankara TOKI Mamak Karakusunlar Housing and shows how the Covid-19 pandemic affects their:
(1) current situation of households,
(2) expectations from the future.
Also Read: Affordable housing: supply and delivery Environment, Housing and Infrastructure Scrutiny Panel