New Gov’t Housing Plan Underway as Earlier Project Falters

“There are 39,000 unfinished Mehr housing units across the country at present, which are expected to be completed by September 2021, when this government’s term of office ends,” he was quoted as saying by IRNA. 

The Mehr project is a large-scale construction program initiated in 2007 by the previous administration to provide 2.2 million low-income people with housing units through free land and cheap credits.

“In addition, the construction of 104,000 housing units under the National Housing Initiative is underway throughout the country; the National Land and Housing Organization of Iran has provided plots of land for the construction of 150,000 units so far,” the official said.

Registration for National Housing Initiative, which is aimed at supplying a total of 400,000 affordable homes to people, started in November 2019. Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami says 436,000 people who registered for these units were found eligible. 

According to Bank Maskan, the state agent bank of the housing sector, 138,563 applicants have deposited 58,760 billion rials ($235 million) for the initial investment in the project. 

President Hassan Rouhani marked the launch and completion of a series of government-backed housing projects via videoconference on Oct. 22. 

A total of 11,600 residential units out of 400,000 homes for middle-income households built under the National Housing Initiative were inaugurated across eight provinces, according to Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mahmoud Mahmoudzadeh.

“The government provided 14,000 billion rials [$56 million] of the total 55,000 billion rials [$220 million] investment needed to complete these residential units in the form of granting land as per 99-year lease agreements to housing cooperatives. The construction of these residential units, which started in early 2019, created 33,000 jobs,” he was quoted as saying by Mehr News Agency. 

In the second segment of the ceremony, 135,000 building plots were handed over to real-estate developers (one plot of land for a group of three or more developers) as government partners in the National Housing Initiative. 

According to the housing official, 14,500 residential units are under construction in slum areas, of which 6,700 were inaugurated in the ceremony. 

“The execution operation of 69,000 residential units to be constructed as per several memorandums of understanding with state bodies was also flagged off on Thursday. A total of 30,000 units will be built for the employees of Education Ministry, 37,000 homes will be constructed for those with the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran and 2,000 will be built for workers as per an agreement with the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare,” he said. 

Mahmoudzadeh noted that the construction of 14,500 residential units for the employees of Education Ministry has already started. 

The total value of National Housing Initiative is estimated at 2,400 trillion rials ($9.6 billion), of which 600 trillion rials ($2.4 billion) are attributed to the value of land and 1,800 trillion rials ($7.2 billion) to the cost of construction services and materials.  

“President Rouhani also marked the completion of 40,108 homes constructed under Mehr Housing Project. The protracted Mehr Housing Project was concluded in a number of provinces. All in all, 53,000 units of the project remain unfinished,” News.mrud.ir quoted Mahmoudzadeh as saying.  

The Mehr project is a large-scale construction program initiated in 2007 by the previous administration to provide 2.2 million low-income people with housing units through free land and cheap credits.

As few as 690,000 of 2.2 million Mehr Housing units were completed under the previous administration, President Rouhani said, “In actuality, it was the Government of Prudence and Hope [his own administration] that carried the burdens of the project. As such, 1.35 million residential units of Mehr project were constructed and delivered to the investors.” 

“The remaining 50,000 units need to be finished by the end of this administration in office. There are about 100,000 units, which either don’t have any applicant or have legal problems,” he added.