Government Pledges to Complete 150,000 Mehr Housing Units

EghtesadOnline: A housing official said the government is providing funds to complete the construction of 150,000 residential units, as part of the protracted Mehr Housing Project initiated more than a decade ago.

News ID: ۷۸۳۲۴۶

14 July 2018

“According to the estimates of a task force set up by the Presidential Office, about 115 trillion rials ($2.66 billion) are needed to finish the Mehr Housing Project, of which 14 trillion rials ($324.82 million) will be supplied in the current Iranian year [which ends on March 20, 2019], enough to deliver the 150,000 residential units,” said deputy minister of roads and urban development, Ahmad Asghari Mehrabadi.

“We have proposed the government issue treasury bonds worth 10 trillion rials ($232.01 million)  to complete the infrastructures of Mehr project and the president [Hassan Rouhani] has instructed the Plan and Budget Organization to look into the issue,” he also told ISNA on Sunday.

Mehrabadi noted that the project involved the construction of 2,200,000 units, of which two million are already complete, according to Financial Tribune.

It was launched in 2007 by the administration of Rouhani’s predecessor to offer low-cost home ownership to over two million families from the low-income strata through free land and cheap credits.

But the nationwide scheme slowed down and was eventually halted due to lack of funding.

Rouhani’s government has so far failed to make good on repeated pledges to resume the suspended project and conclude it within months.