25% Progress in Nat’l Housing Initiative

According to Roads and Urban Development Ministry’s Director General Parvaneh Aslani, the government-sponsored affordable housing project has made 25% progress. 

“Presently, 9,000 units, in addition to those inaugurated last October, are ready,” she was quoted as saying by Hibna.

A total of 2.2 million residential properties constructed under the government-sponsored Mehr Housing Project have been delivered to their owners, of which 1.35 units were built during the administration of President Hassan Rouhani, Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development Ahmad Asghari Mehrabadi said recently. 

“There are 39,000 unfinished Mehr housing units across the country at present but they 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 and the National Land and Housing Organization of Iran has provided plots of land for the construction of 150,000 units so far,” Mehrabadi said.

Registration for National Housing Initiative, which aims to supply a total of 400,000 affordable homes, started in November 2019. 

Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami said of the people who registered for these units, 436,000 were found eligible. According to Bank Maskan, the state agent bank of the housing sector, 138,563 applicants deposited 58,760 billion rials ($235 million) as the down payment in the project. 

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

A total of 11,600 residential units out of 400,000 homes for middle-income households built under the scheme 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, has 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. 

“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 employees of the Education Ministry, 37,000 homes will be constructed for those with the Iranian Armed Forces and 2,000 will be built for workers as per an agreement with the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare. The construction of 14,500 residential units for the employees of Education Ministry has already started,” Mahmoudzadeh added. 

The total value of the 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 has been concluded in a number of provinces. All in all, 53,000 units of the Mehr 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 the 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 burden of the project. As such, 1.35 million residential units of Mehr project were constructed and delivered to 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.”