RASC News Agency: Amid an unrelenting economic crisis and a crumbling urban infrastructure, Kabul is experiencing a catastrophic surge in housing prices that is driving its most vulnerable residents into the margins of existence. Once a capital of modest aspirations and modest rents, the city has now become a battleground of survival where access to shelter, one of the most basic human rights, has been hijacked by an unholy alliance of property speculators and Taliban-affiliated profiteers. The unchecked escalation in rent prices has turned Kabul into a dystopia for the city’s poor, working-class, and displaced communities. As job opportunities disappear under the Taliban’s rigid ideological rule, and humanitarian aid dries up under the weight of international fatigue and donor skepticism, Kabul’s real estate market has paradoxically flourished not as a sanctuary for residents, but as a goldmine for war-era capitalists and regime insiders.
On-the-ground investigations by RASC correspondents confirm an across-the-board surge in rental costs across key neighborhoods Karte 3, Khushal Khan, Qala-e-Fathullah, Darulaman, Karte Parwan, and beyond. Houses that once rented for 6,000–10,000 Kabuli rupees per month are now listed at eye-watering rates of 25,000–30,000 rupees, an increase of more than 200% within two years. This price explosion is occurring in a city where the overwhelming majority of households have no steady income, and where structural unemployment has reached unprecedented levels under Taliban misrule. “Our house has three rooms. We used to pay 8,000 rupees in rent. Now the landlord is demanding 15,000,” said Nabiullah, a resident of District 11, in an interview with RASC. “I’m unemployed. My wife is sick. We have three children. We can neither afford to stay nor find an alternative.”
What makes this crisis particularly obscene is the fact that construction in parts of the city continues at breakneck speed not to meet the needs of ordinary citizens, but to serve the lavish ambitions of Taliban-linked developers. Sources inside the construction sector reveal that Taliban insiders and their business associates are funneling bribes through informal networks to obtain permits for luxury residential and commercial complexes most of which are built without urban planning, environmental review, or public oversight. A civil engineer, speaking under strict anonymity, told RASC:
“These projects are executed under the direct patronage of Taliban commanders and senior officials. The licenses are either forged or issued illegally through bribes. The municipality is powerless, acting more as a ceremonial stamp than a regulator. These projects are not only unregulated they are pillars of Taliban income and corruption.”
The Taliban’s failure to provide even a rudimentary housing policy or any form of regulation against speculative profiteering has opened the floodgates for predatory urban development. With no institutional checks in place, Kabul’s housing market is now a speculative playground for the regime’s elite and their backers, fueling further inflation and displacement. But the consequences of this silent war over shelter are not limited to finances or urban displacement. Mental health professionals across Kabul report a disturbing rise in psychological trauma particularly among youth, women, and unemployed men, who are bearing the brunt of this collapse. Depression, anxiety, and suicide attempts have become alarmingly common. In just the past month, at least 12 suicide attempts were recorded at three of Kabul’s largest hospitals most of them linked to economic despair and housing insecurity.
“Most of our patients are young men and women aged between 20 and 35,” said a psychiatrist at a Kabul mental health facility. “They are caught between silence and collapse. And increasingly, they are choosing collapse.” The psychological unraveling of the city mirrors its physical disintegration. In the absence of a social safety net, and with the Taliban’s de facto administration prioritizing land profiteering over the well-being of its citizens, Kabul is disintegrating into a fragmented cityscape of gated compounds for the powerful and crumbling shelters for the poor.
While the Taliban tout a false narrative of “security” and “order,” Kabul’s residents face a daily battle not for prosperity, but for survival. Basic shelter has become a luxury. Human dignity is collateral damage. The regime’s silence on this crisis is not one of ignorance, but one of calculated negligence an abandonment of civic responsibility in favor of elite enrichment. Today, Kabul is not merely experiencing a housing crisis. It is undergoing a humanitarian unravelling. The city has become a monument to the Taliban’s economic failure and moral bankruptcy where the poor sleep under collapsing ceilings, and the privileged build marble towers with looted opportunity.
