Iran’s Roads and Urban Development Minister Claims Ability to Build ‘Four Million’ Homes in Next Four Years

Iran’s Roads and Urban Development Minister says the Ebrahim Raisi administration has the capacity to build one million homes per year and can construct “four million” homes over the next four years.

Rostam Qasemi said on Sunday, September 7, regarding the Roads and Urban Development Ministry’s plans in the thirteenth government that the engineering capability, technical expertise, and companies exist in the country that can actually build one million homes.

He further stated that according to a recent law passed by the Islamic Consultative Assembly, all ministries are obligated to place their land at the disposal of the Roads and Urban Development Ministry, and currently there are more than one million hectares of government land that should be transferred to our department.

Qasemi continued by saying we will soon acquire ownership of these lands.

Similar statements about building one million housing units annually were also made in previous governments, particularly the “Housing for All” (Maskan-e Mehr) plan that began during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency for low-income groups, which did not achieve success and sparked considerable criticism.

House prices have also increased more than eightfold during Hassan Rouhani’s eight-year administration.

The Central Bank of Iran announced on Sunday in a report that the average price per square meter of housing in Tehran in Mordad of this year reached 30 million and 970 thousand tomans, showing a 34 percent increase compared to Mordad of last year.

Mahmoud Mahmoudzadeh, Deputy Minister of Roads in Hassan Rouhani’s administration, stated in Tir of this year that there are 8.5 million “households” renting in Iran.

Given the existence of 26 million households, approximately one-third of Iran’s population lives in rented housing.

Source: Radio Farda