Queer Precarity, Moralization, and Housing Distress in a Collapsing Istanbul

Abstract

Housing distress is widespread among queer and trans residents in Istanbul, and there is no dedicated shelter for their specific needs. This article argues that housing distress and queer precarity are mutually influenced by the moralized distribution of welfare support and Istanbul's rise as Turkey's neoliberal urban hub. Morality plays a key role in overriding state responsibility and actual harm. Given that the ruling political party, AKP, heavily invests in the urban poor to sustain its voting base, the state's withdrawal emerges as an embodied social problem in the lives of precarious queer subjects when they need welfare support and continually live under the stress of housing. By tracing how moralization and precarity affect sexual minorities—in contrast to the class privileges that position them to bring capital flows to urban centers and to enhance gentrification—I explore how they experience housing distress and participate in community work amid exhaustion. From earthquake risks and collapsing housing infrastructure to gentrification and the securitization of political dissent, housing distress offers a valuable lens for urban ethnographers to analyze urban precarity, neoliberalism, and state governance.