An Investigation of the Effects of Housing Production Performance on Housing Affordability

Abstract

With the 58th Government's Urgent Action Plan, including country-wide housing program, Housing Development Agency (HDA) has been one of the most influential actors in the construction sector. While HDA was leading to mass housing and urban transformation projects, it also targeted to provide housing for low and middle-income households. To do that, it executed various housing implementations in different regions of Turkey. However, the regional contribution of these activities to the housing affordability of households was not considered. Turkish urban policies, which are generally determined without the needs assessments and current situation analysis, are not monitored for their achievement of the expected outcomes or creation of unexpected impacts. On the contrary, a successful policy-making process requires analyzing needs and the current situation and monitoring the results of the implementation. With the country-wide housing program, based on the prevailing discourse of housing shortage and not backed up by scientific assessments, the housing production capacity of Turkey has considerably increased. This study aims at understanding and revealing the main effects of HDA's housing policies and production for low-income households on housing affordability issue. The results of the study indicate that although there are significant improvements in housing affordability of households, housing affordability ratio of regions is still higher than the predefined affordability criterion which is 30\%. Even one of HDA's primary target is to provide housing for low-income households, the lack of contribution of its housing production to the housing affordability of low-income groups was observed.