The leader of the Freedom Party, Jasmira Memelli, has criticized the Rama government over rising housing costs, stating that a young person in Albania needs 60 to 70 years of savings to buy a studio apartment on the outskirts of Tirana. According to Memelli, high housing prices have turned shelter into an unaffordable luxury for thousands of citizens and families. She also accuses the government of allowing the construction sector to become a channel for laundering money from crime and corruption.
Full statement
Albania is experiencing one of the most severe housing crises in Europe, and this is the product of an economic and political model that has abandoned citizens and favored the interests of a small group of people. The published figures are a serious indictment of this government. Buying a home has become 76.3% more expensive relative to income compared with 2015. While housing prices have risen by 214.4%, disposable income per capita has risen by only 78.4%.
This is the result of 13 years of Edi Rama’s governance. Albanians work more, pay more, yet can afford less and less. Ten years ago, a home cost ten years of income; today, it takes a full 17.6 years of income to buy the same home. In Tirana, a 100-square-meter apartment costs on average around 195,000 euros. A young couple who wants to start a family faces only an absurd choice: give up the dream of owning a home in their own country, or leave Albania.
It is no coincidence that young people have taken to the streets in protest. They have every right to demand a future in their own country, the right to work, to start a family, and to have a roof over their heads. When a young person has to save for 60 to 70 years to buy a studio apartment on the outskirts of Tirana, it is no longer a housing crisis but an economic sentence for an entire generation. What future can this government offer its own young people when even the most modest home has become an unreachable luxury? Their protest is the voice of a generation that refuses to sacrifice its whole life to secure what should be a normal opportunity: its own home.
Young people cannot build their lives on electoral promises, while the government looks at the towers going up as signs of economic success and ignores thousands of families who cannot afford even a modest apartment. But behind this facade of construction-sector growth lies another very serious problem: the model of narco-economy that Edi Rama’s government has built, based mainly on construction. A sector that has become a giant washing machine for laundering dirty money from organized crime and corruption.
The publications of Albanian Files have raised questions and brought to attention serious allegations about the links between power, criminal interests and this economic model. These are issues that demand transparency and a full investigation, including the political responsibility of Edi Rama for how this model was built and how it operates. While Albanians cannot afford housing prices, high-rise towers continue to spring up in every corner of the country. This model does not produce well-being for citizens; instead, it concentrates wealth and benefits in the hands of a minority connected to power, while Albanian families bear the cost.
The government cannot keep hiding behind the facade of economic growth when a citizen cannot buy a home with the income from his own work. It cannot speak of pro-family policies while making the creation of a family increasingly unaffordable. The Freedom Party considers housing a right and a fundamental condition for building a family, not a privilege for those who have capital or connections to power.
For this reason, in our program, “5 priorities for 4 million Albanians plus,” we have placed at the center, for young couples, the opportunity to secure an affordable home, financial support for young families and mothers, and the creation of conditions that allow young people to build their future in Albania rather than in emigration. We believe policy should support those who want to work, start families and live in their own country, not force them to choose emigration.
Albania does not need more towers that enrich a few people, but policies that give Albanians the chance to have a roof over their heads. A government that does not guarantee young people the opportunity to build a family and have a home cannot claim it is building the country’s future. It is selling that future to Albanians, at prices they cannot afford! Thank you!