MELIH OZUNAL and his neighbours had reason to worry about the state of their apartment block in Goztepe, on Istanbul’s Asian shore. They had long known that the cement used in their building, which dates back to the late 1980s, had been made from corrosive sand dredged from the bottom of the Marmara Sea. But last year, after he discovered that the contractor had used 16-millimetre iron rebars, instead of the 18mm ones mentioned in the original plans, Mr Ozunal, a retired architect, asked the local authorities to check the building’s earthquake resilience. “Everyone here is anxious,” he says, as inspectors use a hammer to test the strength of the concrete in one of the columns. “We might need to have the building torn down and replaced.”

Concerns over the state of Istanbul’s ageing housing stock have mounted since last year, when a violent quake killed more than 53,000 people in southern Turkey. The city, home to 16m people, is bracing for a similar disaster. Leading seismologists put the probability of a 7.0-magnitude earthquake striking the region before 2030 at over 60%. Europe’s biggest city is not ready. Istanbul’s infrastructure is in reasonably good shape, but not so its buildings, the majority of which are not up to code. The mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), says about 200,000 (out of 1.2m) are at risk of collapsing or suffering irreparable damage once the ground starts to shake. Earthquake preparedness is sure to be on the minds of many Istanbullus, as well as voters across Turkey, when they head to the polls to elect mayors and council members on March 31st. Mr Imamoglu’s own job will be on the line.

Economic malaise, accompanied by a severe housing crisis, are holding up progress. Harun, an inspector, says residents regularly stop him and his colleagues from screening their buildings. That is understandable, somewhat. For many Istanbul residents, the costs of building back better, even with some help from the state or the city, and of having to find a place to live in the meantime, are too high to bear. Inflation in Turkey, which in February topped 67% in annual terms, has warped the property market. The cost of construction materials, as well as a tendency to hedge against inflation by investing in real estate, have propelled rents and property prices. Over the past two years, property prices in Istanbul and Ankara, the capital, have soared by a dizzying 272% and 332%, respectively. Rents have jumped too, as landlords charge speculative rates to protect future incomes from inflation.

Housing costs are also one of the reasons why many of the 3m people displaced by last year’s earthquake cannot move to other parts of the country. Halit, an upholsterer from Antakya, once a picturesque city of some 500,000, now largely a wasteland of rubble picked apart by bulldozers, moved to Bursa, in northern Turkey, after the earthquake flattened his house. He returned to Antakya as soon as he learned he could move into a container home, provided free of charge by the government. He says he has no choice but to stay there until earthquake recovery kicks into gear. “Wherever I go, I will not be able to pay rent,” he says.

He may have to wait many years. Soon after the earthquake, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, promised to build 319,000 new houses, to replace those destroyed in the disaster, in a year’s time. That promise has since turned to dust. Even by the government’s own estimates, no more than 75,000 homes will be ready by the end of March. The housing shortage has had a predictable impact. Over the past year, Hatay, the region affected the most by the quake, has seen the biggest increase in rents of any of Turkey’s 81 provinces.

Earthquake-proofing has turned into one of the main themes of Istanbul’s mayoral campaign. Murat Kurum, the ruling Justice and Development party’s candidate, has promised to deliver 650,000 new housing units, accompanied by generous subsidies, in five years if elected. Past experience and present economic conditions suggest this is a pipe dream. The project’s price tag could easily top $50bn, roughly the size of the country’s entire construction sector and 5% of GDP. Neither the public nor Mr Erdogan’s government are in a position to offer such levels of financing.

Mr Imamoglu has made a more modest pledge, to cover most of the construction costs of 50,000 new buildings, but even that may be too optimistic. Since 2019, when he was elected, the municipality’s construction company has completed work on only 10,000 housing units. No more than 2,000 buildings have been demolished. On its own, the mayor’s office does not have the resources needed to overhaul Istanbul’s housing stock, acknowledges Gurkan Akgun, the city’s top zoning official. Mr Erdogan recently suggested his government might be able to help, assuming the city votes for the right candidate, meaning his own. “Who runs the country today?” he told a crowd of supporters, while stumping for Mr Kurum. “We do. Does the person in charge of Istanbul have our resources? He does not.”■