Cabinet to Review Construction of 200,000 Houses as Part of Social Housing Plan

The government will this week review the building of 200,000 housing units as part of the Social Housing Plan, announced a deputy of the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development.

Hamed Mazaherian added that the plan includes measures to improve homeownership among the lowest income decile of the population.  

The Social Housing Plan is used to refer to all measures taken by the government to provide homes for low-income families, such that all schemes implemented since the 1979 Islamic Revolution such as lease-to-own or rental assistance programs and Mehr Housing Plan fall under social housing, Fars News Agency reported. 

The deputy minister responded to criticism about the vagueness surrounding the plan, as three years have passed since President Hassan Rouhani came to office and the Social Housing Plan, which was supposedly a replacement for the controversial Mehr Housing Plan–started by the previous administration–has not gotten off the ground. 

Mazaherian said the current government has prioritized the completion of Mehr Housing Plan, “that’s why all the budget and resources have been allocated so that the project can come to a conclusion sooner and other [affordable housing] schemes, which aim to support low-income families, can be implemented.

Mehr Housing Plan was facing major funding problems when the administration of President Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013 and became a major quandary for the government struggling with a mountain of economic challenges. The scheme has also been criticized for lacking the infrastructure needed for offering a reasonable standard of living.  

Noting that all the components of Social Housing Plan are in line with local and international experience, the deputy minister announced that the plan will be discussed in Cabinet meetings during the current week.

“These measures aim to build 200,000 housing units as part of the Social Housing Plan. Its agent entity is the Housing Foundation of the Islamic Revolution and it will be dedicated to providing homes for people in the lower income groups,” he said.

Answering a question about whether the Iranian housing market will quit recession this year, the official said statistics show that the number of housing deals has been on the rise since the beginning of the current year (started March 20) and price hikes have been “below the inflation rate”.

When such a trend has appeared in the eight months that have passed since the start of the current Iranian year, Mazaherian said it is the consensus of experts that the housing sector is on the threshold of recovery.

“I believe that this trend will continue toward the end of the current month (Dec. 20) and the volume of real-estate deals will keep on rising in the last three months of the year,” he said.