| Abstrakt: |
This paper examines the trends and challenges of housing affordability in the Turkish case. Concurrently, it questions the use of conventional affordability measures in a developing country context. Survey of Income and Living Conditions is employed to examine the housing affordability through ratio, residual income, and subjective approaches. The results reveal that there is a weak agreement between different approaches in identifying the affordability problem in the Turkish context, and subjective approach is a promising method for a thorough understanding of the issue. Findings also display an improvement in housing affordability in the country during the observed period. This improvement is attributed to the high housing output created in the country as well as the consistent increase in GDP per capita levels, particularly in the last 15 years. Multivariate analysis displays that low-income households, tenants, households who identify problems with the dwelling unit and the neighbourhood quality, households living in socioeconomically developed regions and regions experiencing housing shortages are more likely to report heavy housing cost burden. One of the conclusions of the study is that defining and measuring housing affordability itself is a challenge in the Turkish case. The study also concludes that alternative policies should be developed to the current ones encouraging access to homeownership for low-income households, considering that affordability of running costs could even be a problem for low-income owner-occupiers in some cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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