The housing crisis is growing...

We find ourselves having to write about certain topics over and over again. Whenever we are forced to repeat a subject, know that it is one of the biggest problems in that field. It is gangrenous, unsolvable, and becoming increasingly tangled...

I look back at the articles I have written for 12punto... For example, I have written four consecutive articles on "intra-party embrace and intra-party unity" within the CHP. Moreover, two of these articles have almost the same title: "The solution for CHP; The Great Embrace and The Great Embrace"... Has anyone taken this persistence into account? Of course not... The path of division, "us vs. them" mentality, and narrow factionalism has continued... It is very sad, even devastating... I will not go into this topic for now, but it is clear that we will be talking about it a lot in the coming days.

The topic I want to address again today is the housing crisis...

After the ongoing labor strikes in İzmir, I think everyone, especially white-collar workers, has reviewed their own salary scales. Being organized is certainly a great advantage in terms of seeking rights... But what if you come from a profession that is not organized or has weak organization? Then you are in a desperate situation... There is no one to hear your voice, no one to heed your cry...

Especially if you are a retiree or living on minimum wage, life turns into a "Survivor" competition... The painful part is that while life, with all its reality including children and family, is right in front of you, Survivor is just a competition you watch on the screen...

Academia is exactly that kind of profession... A community of people who are generally left in the background in terms of organization and making their voices heard, who are labor-intensive, idea-intensive, and who have taken on the sacred duty of teaching... The architects of our future... They are both shaping the mental world of the young people who are our future and contributing to the country's scientific development with their research... In recent years, while doing all this, they are also trying to struggle with the high cost of living.

The biggest items in the high cost of living are rent and children's education... But rents, in particular, are spiraling out of control.

Look, according to the results of the Türk-İş hunger and poverty threshold research for May 2025, the monthly food expenditure amount required for a family of four living in Ankara to have a healthy, balanced, and adequate diet—that is, the hunger threshold—has risen to 25,092 TL, and the total amount of other mandatory monthly expenditures for clothing, housing (rent, electricity, water, fuel), transportation, education, health, and similar needs—that is, the poverty threshold—has risen to 81,733 TL. For single individuals, the cost of living is 32,463 TL per month.

According to current data from Endeksa, the average rent in Istanbul is 27,767 TL. While the highest average rent is in the Sarıyer district at 58,760 TL, the lowest average is in the Esenyurt district at 17,000 TL. While the average rent in Kadıköy, which is frequently preferred by white-collar workers due to its ease of transportation, is 54,000 TL, it is 54,867 TL in Beşiktaş, which is also preferred for its ease of transportation on the European side.

With things as they are, imagine you are a brand-new associate professor with a salary between 70,000 and 75,000 TL. Between electricity, water, and building maintenance fees, your entire salary goes to housing expenses. If you are lucky and your spouse has also been able to find a job, you still have to make ends meet with one salary. It is simply not sustainable...

An article published in the Berkeley Economic Review in April 2019 stated briefly: The generation born between 1946 and 1964 (baby boomers) accounts for almost half of homeownership. The millennial generation, born between 1981 and 1997, despite outnumbering the baby boomers, struggles greatly to become homeowners because they coincide with a period of housing crisis.

Today, we understand much better what this research meant. If there is a house left over from parents, families now prefer to live with the elderly to try and avoid the burden of rent.

The housing problem is huge and continues to grow like a snowball. However, salary updates for certain professional groups must be made much more urgently. Especially for academics, judges, doctors... People are suffocating from the struggle to make a living... For the attention of those concerned...