In the Afghan Capital, Rents Go Through the Roof

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

The New York Times
May 14, 2002, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 4; Column 3; Foreign Desk
HEADLINE: Kabul Journal;
In the Afghan Capital, Rents Go Through the Roof
BYLINE:  By BARRY BEARAK
DATELINE: KABUL, Afghanistan, May 13

House No. 181 on 15th Street, while spacious, is definitely a
fixer-upper. The kitchen cabinets, built with cheap plywood, are
cracked. The linoleum floors in the halls are buckling. Wires hang
like nooses from bedroom ceilings.

The last tenant paid $500 a month for the place, an amount that now
seems decidedly paltry in this city of galloping rents. The current
cost is $10,000. Location, location, location: the usual rules of
real estate apply. But who would have thought Kabul, a bombed-out
cadaver of a city, was as well situated as Manhattan?

Six months ago, with the Taliban still in power, landlords were more
apt to think they were sitting on a sinkhole than a gold mine.
Afghanistan had been through 22 consecutive years of war, leaving
about 40 percent of Kabul looking post-apocalyptic.

"In a matter of months, the market has gone wild," said Azizullah,
one of the city's best-known property dealers and these days a man of
uncommonly good cheer. "A $70,000 house is now worth $1 million, and
even for $1 million, most owners wouldn't sell."

The value lies in Kabul's very woe. Afghanistan is being placed on
the comeback trail. Foreigners -- aid groups, businessmen, the media,
the United Nations -- are setting up shop or expanding operations.
Refugees, some well fattened in the West, are returning.

Demand easily surpasses supply, particularly in Kabul's two elite
neighborhoods, Wazir Akbar Khan and Shahr-i-Naw. Foreigners vie for
houses with the comforts of home, wanting electricity in relatively
steady supply, preferring toilets that allow one to sit rather than
squat.

Many tenants are willing to pay a landlord six months rent in
advance, some a full year. Some have no scruples about signing two
leases, one for the actual price and the other for a bogus pittance,
a document the owner can then use when the time comes to pay taxes.

"I had no idea this house would ever be worth $3,000 or $4,000 a
month," a self-satisfied man named Wahidullah said the other day. He
had just moved back to Kabul from Pakistan. Carpenters and
electricians, working for $8 a day, were readying his family's
property. "Maybe I will never have to work again. Maybe I will have
it made for life."

Unfortunately, there are but a few winners in Kabul's real estate
bonanza and a great many losers. Those who can afford the higher
rents are displacing those who cannot, who in turn push out those
even lower on the economic ladder. Evictions have become epidemic.

In the poorer neighborhoods, where sewers run in an open ditch and
houses have mud floors, people are stunned by the upheaval of
escalating prices.

Kabul has an estimated population of two million, including 200,000
refugees who have come in just the past few months, seemingly
limitless rivals for extremely limited shelter.

On Saturday, a distraught woman named Farishta visited a property
agent in Khair Khana, a low-income neighborhood. For years, her rent
had been about $12.50 a month. Suddenly, her landlord has demanded
$95. She must find another place.

"I am a teacher and my husband is an engineer," she said, her voice a
quivering plea emerging from beneath the camouflage of a burka.
"There are no houses that even literate people can afford. What are
the very poorest going to do?"

Shah Bacha, a proud man wearing the threadbare clothes of a day
laborer, is among the poorest. His family lives in one of the squalid
hovels of Khwoja Bhugra, paying about $6.25 for rent. Last week, the
owner of the house said the rent was rising to $90, an impossible sum
for Mr. Bacha. "I will have to take my children and sleep in the
streets," he said.

On Sunday, an organization of charities working in Kabul -- the
Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief -- issued a plea for rent
controls and an easing of restrictions on new construction. Part of
the blame for inflated rents was placed on some of the international
do-gooders in their midst: the World Bank, the United Nations,
prosperous aid groups.

A fair bit of sniping is going on between those agencies paying the
higher rents and others who are holding to a stricter budget. Medair,
a charity best known here for fighting tuberculosis, was spending
$500 a month for its headquarters in Shahr-i-Naw.

"The landlord told us his family was moving back here, and according
to the lease, we had to go," said Claire Rowe, the organization's
finance and administration manager. "Of course, they just wanted us
out so they could move in someone else for more money."

That someone turns out to be the financially strapped World Food
Program of the United Nations, which is now paying $8,000 a month to
use the building as residential space. "It's an unfortunate
situation, and everyone has had to face it," said Jennifer
Abrahamson, a spokeswoman for the agency.

Prices are quoted here with little evident shame, the way they would
be in Hong Kong or London or the Hamptons. Subtle pressure is applied
to customers, who are told that once the billions of dollars in
Western aid begin arriving, 20,000 more foreigners may descend on
Kabul, heightening the competition.

As Azizullah, the well-known real estate man, mentioned this, he sent
his eyebrows skyward, denoting the direction that rents would go. He
continued a tour of available homes. At House 181 on 15th Street, in
Wazir Akbar Khan, one of the owner's employees helped show off the
$10,000-a-month space.

To be candid, the place did not look so great. There were paint
stains on the floors. "If you want, we will carpet this with some
kind of carpet," the man said offhandedly.

There was a yardlong gap between one section of the house and the
other, with a two-foot drop in between. "If you want, some kind of
bridge can be made," the man said.

There were bathtubs and wash basins with the enamel chipped away. "If
you want, this too can be fixed," said the man, who by then had begun
to grow impatient, wondering what a foreigner expected for $10,000 a
month.

GRAPHIC: Photos: Shah Bacha, a day laborer in Kabul, has been told
that the rent for the hovel he inhabits is going up from $6.25 a
month to $90, an impossible sum for him. "I will have to take my
children and sleep in the streets," he said.; The real-estate market
in Afghanistan's capital has, in the words of one property dealer,
"gone wild." This fixer-upper is for rent at $10,000 a month.
(Photographs by Steve Connors for The New York Times)

Map of Kabul highlights Wazir Akbar Khan: Wazir Akbar Khan, an elite
neighborhood, is favored by foreigners.
--
Yoshie

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