Failing promises of homeownership in Turkey

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2020-12-23
Aksoy Khurami, Esma
Homeownership is not a new agenda of housing policy in Turkey. During the last 20 years, policies promoting homeownership have been executed, and planning has been used as a pair of tongs. Through new house building, the increase in homeownership rates is expected to provide individuals with a means of opportunity. As initial promises, homeownership is argued to provide everyone with a chance to acquire a stable home, a way of refraining from affordability problems, wealth accumulation through housing, and the establishment of economic security. The approach of governments to the homeownership focused more on the equalizer effect of homeownership among low- and high-income households through housing wealth; a significant trade-off between housing asset and welfare provision. Although governments and individuals take those promises for granted, whether these commitments of homeownership are satisfied in Turkey or not remains uninvestigated. The success of policies that promote homeownership in the provision of housing wealth and housing security is not observed. This thesis fırst investigates the country-wide data sources and optimal methodology to analyze the housing wealth and housing security promises of homeownership separately. Then, it labors the measurement of the promises of homeownership simultaneously in Ankara. The findings display that homeownership ends up with various outcomes for Turkish households. Promoting homeownership does not serve equal opportunities for housing wealth and housing security. Overall success is 25.5 percent for housing wealth and 15.2 percent for housing security in Turkey. The levels of achievement in housing wealth and housing security display that not all of the owner-occupier households benefit from homeownership promises. This study has three major conclusions: (i) Policies should focus on improving low-income households’ housing security rather than promoting homeownership among low-income households. (ii) Rather than favouring homeownership alone, housing policies should be tenure neutral and focus on developing various tenure modes. (iii) Policies should always be monitored for intended and not intended outcomes. In the case of promises o homeownership, comprehensive panel data that allows simultaneous examination of housing wealth and housing security is required to observe the effects of the national-level homeownership encouraging policies.

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Citation Formats
E. Aksoy Khurami, “Failing promises of homeownership in Turkey,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2020.