Social-housing-focused urbanism and its effect on social justice

Yeni Şafak · Yasin Aktay - Social housing-oriented urbanism and its impact on social justice

Housing is perhaps one of the most important areas in which, together with development, a contribution can be made to social justice. It was also one of the areas that the AK Party, which came to power in 2002 with great hopes, valued most highly and delivered on best. Türkiye is a country with a large young population, where housing demand grows in proportion to the population, even faster than the population itself. Housing supply, however, cannot keep pace with the population. Even so, with its policies that made housing production and supply possible not only for those who could afford it but also for the lower-income group who could not, the AK Party opened up a great gap between itself and previous governments within a short time.

Perhaps one of the most important secrets behind its remaining in power for so long with the approval of the lower- and middle-income groups was its health policies, and another was its housing policy. Housing policies also formed one of the strongest channels of communication between the AK Party leadership and the broad segments of society for whom the dream of "a roof over one's head" holds an important place in life.

Thanks to the housing mass-produced by TOKİ, above all, it produced an alternative to shanty houses and to far lower-quality, infrastructure-poor, haphazard and, to that same degree, expensive housing. Thanks to this alternative, a considerable segment of people who in the past might never have owned a home in their entire lives became homeowners, and their lifestyles changed through these homes. In a sense, through this acquisition of housing, people in the 32 percent bracket moved rapidly to a middle-class economic level and lifestyle. As for the rent generated by the homes acquired, the whole of that rent went to the lower-income group that obtained these homes by cheap means. Thus, at least at this level, a serious degree of social income justice was achieved.

Truly, the problem or goal that TOKİ was trying to overcome in its early days was not to produce ideal housing adapted to our civilization, our culture, and ideal long-term city plans. On the contrary, it was to produce housing for the masses who longed for a reasonable home in which to take shelter, and it did this more than amply. For that reason it was heavily criticized with talk of serial and standard housing production. These were utterly unjust and irresponsible criticisms.

People urgently needed a home in which to take shelter, and had there been no such way of acquiring housing, what awaited them was not better-quality homes but either homelessness or, at best, shanty houses.

The lower-income people who so easily became homeowners thanks to TOKİ also made these homes a step toward a better life. The housing production carried out in this way has so far approached one and a half million units, and quality landscaping and urban infrastructure have been provided around these homes. Likewise, access to housing became somewhat easier, especially for the lower-income groups. To put it in a simple figure, the age of home acquisition had fallen from the mid-forties to the early thirties, 33, as of 2014.

Thanks to this housing policy, on the one hand the construction sector and all its related sectors began to experience tremendous dynamism within a short time. While the housing standard that was set led people who had previously seen the middle class to seek housing of higher quality than TOKİ's, they also took the bar set by TOKİ as a reference. Thus TOKİ also made a considerable contribution to overall housing quality during this period.

Perhaps in recent times the age factor in low-income earners' access to housing had begun to rise again and the channels of access had begun to become somewhat more difficult. This in fact signified a relative distancing from the segments of society that brought the AK Party to power and kept it there. Everyone actually saw this, but although global and regional factors in the economy provided a pretext, they did not provide an excuse. What could have prevented cadres who had previously managed to do what was extremely difficult from doing better, or at least the same, after so much experience?

This question found its answer in the new housing mobilization that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced yesterday. The new housing project showed that the government has not become detached from the sociology of society after 20 years, and that it possesses the technical competence and experience to produce the solutions that will provide the most important responses to it.

With the largest social housing project in the history of the Republic, the construction of hundreds of thousands of new social homes, housing plots and workplaces begins at once in 81 provinces. Thus the number of social homes realized so far will rise to 2 million, and the number of people living in these homes to 10 million. We are observing closely, and living through, what kind of sociological impact this project, which corresponds to nearly 12 percent of the population, has.

Leaving aside the other dimensions of these results, we can foresee that at the very least the social justice dimension will be very strong, and therefore we can congratulate everyone who has contributed to this project and hope that it will be seen through to completion.