Even in rich countries, some low-income and poor households do not have access to decent housing. Therefore, governments try to prevent the exacerbation of the problem by devising and implementing amelioration plans. A government’s failure can turn this issue into a crisis for a large number of people. In other words, if a large group of citizens feel troubled meeting their housing needs, then we should call it “housing crisis”. These were stated by Nasser Zakeri, an economist, in a write-up for the Persian daily Shargh. A translation of the text follows:
Iran’s housing problem in recent years has snowballed into a crisis. For a better understanding of the problem, we need to pay attention to these facts:
Given the annual minimum wage, the waiting period to buy a 50-square-meter housing unit in Tehran has increased from 29 years in 1986-87 to 46 years in 2006-7 and 111 years in 2022-23. To be more precise, there is no connection between salary and home purchase for years now and saving a fraction of the monthly salary to buy a home has lost its meaning.