Why has the national housing movement failed? – Tejarat News
According to Tejarat News, the national housing movement can be called the super project of the 13th government. The plan that was supposed to provide shelter to 4 million Iranian families at the end of the first term of Ebrahim Raisi’s government. But the life of the government has already passed and the national housing movement is still in its initial stages, and the most optimistic estimates do not announce its progress more than 20%. In this report, we have examined the reasons for the government’s failure to fulfill the promise of 4 million housing units.
Where did 4 million houses come from?
On the 10th of Khordad 1400, Hojjat-ul-Islam Ebrahim Raisi went to Sedav-Sima Organization to record his election interview. Before entering the recording studio of this program, the candidate for the 13th term of the presidential election appeared in the group of journalists and answered their questions.
A day later, Fars news agency published a report on the questions of the reporters and the president’s answers: “This presidential candidate answered the question of another reporter who asked which of his promises in his government would be fulfilled sooner than the rest of the promises and in what time frame, he said “Housing is one of the concerns of people, especially young people and young couples, and we are trying to solve both this concern and the problem of the population by producing housing, because the biggest obstacle to the marriage of young people is the lack of suitable housing.” This candidate did not stop with these words and continued: “I have told the young people to get married, we will follow up the construction of housing for them from the very first day of the government and I think it is possible to build 4 million residential units within 4 years.” It was from here that the construction of 4 million housing units in 4 years was attributed to Mr. Raisi.
Where did 1 million houses come from?
In September of 2019, the representatives of the 11th Parliament, who were mostly staunch opponents of the established government, brought a two-urgent plan to the public forum under the title of the plan to jump production and housing supply. The argument of the designers was that Rouhani’s cabinet does not care enough to build housing, the market has suffered a shortage of supply, and therefore housing has turned from a consumer product to a capital product.
Critics of the government, who at that time were dressed as people’s advocates in the parliament, said that the government’s policies in the housing construction sector have led to a stagnation in production, which has “caused the closure and reduction of the production of some steel, cement, and tile industries, and since More than 156 fields of economic activity are directly and indirectly related to the construction sector, unemployment and the increase in housing prices due to the decrease in supply are the consequences of these policies…
In this way, the plan was approved by the representatives first, and after a while, the plan itself passed the approval of the representatives, but one of the games of the time is that Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, as the Speaker of the Parliament, presented the law approved by the Guardian Council to Ebrahim Raisi on 24 Shahrivar 1400. announced in the capacity of the president. In other words, the plan that wanted to make Rouhani’s government active in the field of housing was inherited by Raisi’s government.
In the first article of this law, it is stated that the government is obliged to provide the annual housing needs of the country based on the announcement of the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development documented in studies of the “Comprehensive Housing Plan” in urban and rural areas and to plan and act in a way so that in the first 4 years The implementation of this law will provide an average of at least 1 million housing units in the country to eligible applicants based on the Law on Organizing and Supporting the Production and Supply of Housing approved on 02/25/2018 and related regulations. This is where the annual construction of 1 million residential units became a legal obligation for the government.
Earth challenge
Shortly after the establishment of the 13th government, the biggest challenge of realizing the national housing movement appeared; This challenge was the problem of land supply. The president and his first vice-president repeatedly obliged the government agencies to hand over the land they have to the Ministry of Housing as soon as possible so that the national housing movement can actually be keyed.
Despite all this, the land was not provided in the expected amount to the point where the head of government was forced to address several times in the meetings of the government board, economic council, etc.
One year after the establishment of the government, criticism of the slow progress of the national movement began in the parliament, and Rostam Ghasemi was under pressure, so that in the middle of September 1401, he was forced to change his housing and building deputy.
From here on, Rostam Ghasemi, the minister in charge of fulfilling the government’s promise, raised his voice to criticize. He directed his criticism at his counterparts in other ministries who did not cooperate to provide the land. Then he criticized the banking network for not providing the necessary resources.
However, Rostam Ghasemi’s strategy did not materialize and the criticism of him was so high that he was finally forced to leave the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. where many emirs say that he was not interested in his administration from the beginning and preferred to go to the 15-story building on Taleghani Street instead of going to the high-rise building of Abbas Abad hills and run the Ministry of Oil.
With the realization of the volume of problems for the implementation of the super project of building 4 million housing units in 4 years, the adjustment of the promise was placed on the agenda of the officials of the 13th government; Propositions such as the government is not going to build all 4 million housing units on its own (Speaker of the Majlis, 29 Azar 401) or the construction of 4 million housing units in 4 years does not necessarily mean the construction of 1 million units per year (Parliamentary Deputy of the President, 20 Azar 401) and… Such words were heard more than ever around the time of the Parliament’s vote of confidence in the second Minister of Roads and Urban Development.
Rostam Ghasemi’s successor knew what kind of mini field was opened before him, in the same vote of confidence meeting, he poured clean water on the hands of lawyers and their clients and said that fulfilling the president’s promise requires providing a figure more than the entire country’s budget: “4 million housing units multiplied by 100 square meters will be 400 million square meters and if the average meter is calculated at 7 million tomans, it will be equal to 2 thousand 800 hemats and this year’s budget is about 1 thousand 500 hemats. Therefore, we have to answer where the problem is and what the Ministry of Road should do to finance 2,800 projects.” He also criticized the members of the parliament that they must have checked the assumptions during the approval of the housing production surge law!
Mehrdad Bazarpash, despite declaring a clear position about the impossibility of producing 4 million housing units in 4 years, received a vote of confidence from the 11th Parliament, so that whenever he is faced with a representative’s question about why this project has not gone ahead, he says “I said that…”
The price challenge
Many thought that the national housing movement is a copy of the Mehr housing plan and will be implemented according to the same model, but it seems that the authority of the government of Ibrahim Raisi is not the same as the authority of the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, nor the increasing inflation of this decade, a power for the banking network and mass builders. And it left the real estate developers to enter the field as before.
The high price of the residential units of the National Movement is one of the most serious problems that has pushed back the mass builders of the private sector.
At the end of April last month, Tasnim news agency investigated the problems of the national housing movement in a series of reports and declared the low price of construction as one of the most serious obstacles to the progress of the project. At that time, the head of the National Association of Mass Builders told Tasnim that with a fixed price of 4.5 million tomans per meter, it is not possible to build for the private sector.
Seyyed Mohammad Mortazavi said that even with the application of the adjustment factor of the program organization, this figure reaches 5 million and 600 thousand tomans per meter, which is still much less than the construction costs!
These prices were discussed while the estimate of the Housing Foundation showed that the cost of building a 4-7 floor apartment in urban areas in February 401 is at least 7.5 million tomans.
Last July, the minimum price for building a house was estimated at 9.5 million tomans based on the description of the National Housing Movement, but August was not half way through yet, ISNA news agency quoted the head of the Tehran Engineering Organization as saying: “The minimum construction cost per square meter of a building 12 million tomans have been announced by mass builders, and this number is about 8 million tomans for the National Housing Movement Plan.
On the 1st of September last month, the CEO of the New Cities Company promised the following in a press conference: “The price of the construction of the National Housing Movement will be finalized within the next 10 days.” This means that the trustees of the National Housing Movement have realized that construction with the previously mentioned figures is impossible in practice, and they should create a desire in the private sector to participate in this plan by presenting a real figure, so that at least part of the election promise and the legal obligation of the established government can be fulfilled. to find
The problem is infrastructure such as contract and price
Hassan Mohtsham, one of the private veterans of mass housing construction, told Insaf News reporter about the relationship between trade unions and professional associations in this area with the government: each of the associations interacts and contacts with the government in some way, and for example, the Association of Mass Builders of Tehran Province with the General Road and Urban Development Department The province is in communication and interaction, but the problem is that the housing production infrastructure is not provided as it should be.
He continued: The contracts concluded with the mass builder are in the form of a lessor-lessee contract, which is not the right type at all and has no meaning. In this contract, the mass builder is known as the tenant, and the Department of Roads and Urban Development or the Ministry is the owner. The reason for choosing this type of contract is unclear to us.
A member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Mass Builders of Tehran Province further cited the contract amount as one of the reasons for the reluctance of mass builders to participate in the national housing movement plan and said: With the inflation that exists in the country, the numbers considered for construction seem very unrealistic. reaches and should be adjusted, but experience has also shown that the program organization’s adjustments still do not match the construction figure with inflation.
Mr. Mohtsham pointed to the signed contracts and added: “With the current conditions, I have no hope of correct and timely implementation of these contracts because there are many uncertainties.” In addition to being far from the realities of the country, the prices included in the contracts have not been made clear, and they have not explained the duties of insurance and taxes.
He said: The mass builder is worried about how he will have to deal with the tax department and the social security organization after the end of the project, and therefore he has no motivation to enter the national housing movement.
Mohtsham called the contract one of the most important infrastructures necessary for mass builders to enter the national housing movement and said: When construction figures are not real and transparent, the issue of ownership and the relationship between the builder and the buyer and the government has not been clarified, the issue of insurance and taxes has remained silent, and… the mass builder cannot come to work with full capacity, and therefore, if the government wants this plan to come to fruition, it must make the assignment of the price and the contract clear and transparent.
Source: Insaf News