TEHRAN, Iran, July. 2
Trend:
Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami announced that some 1.33 million of housing units of the total 2.2 million units planned as part of the Mehr Housing Project, have been built, Trend reports via IRNA.
He went on to say that that the mentioned amount of units have been built within President Hassan Rouhani's first and second presidential terms (last 5 years).
Mehr Housing Project is a large-scale construction program initiated in 2007 by then Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to provide affordable apartments for two million low-income people through free land and cheap credits.
"The government has an obligation to provide the ground for people to become homeowners,” Eslami said.
"Housing prices have always been affected by markets such as gold and currency,” he said. “The government has tried to control this inflammatory psychological atmosphere. One of the measures was to determine the maximum rent increase in different cities.”
With Iranian rial undergoing a sharp devaluation over the last year, driven by a combination of sanctions and domestic mismanagement, wealthy Iranians have poured their savings into the property market, causing house prices to surge even as sales have fallen. The impact of higher house prices has contributed to inflation which has further eroded the purchasing power of ordinary families, especially those who rent their homes.
The National Action Plan for Production and Supply of Housing aims to construct 400,000 small and medium-size apartments (70-100 square meters in size) across the country and particularly in Tehran, where housing prices have risen sharply.
According to Mohammad Eslami, the government is hoping to wrap up the construction of the housing units by April 2021.