A Discussion on Affordable Housing Projects; Case Study Mehr Housing, Iran

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A B S T R A C T Housing is one of the basic needs for humans. Families in different countries with various cultures, who have different life styles respond to their individual needs including physical and mental in a safe place that is called house. The world population is increasing day by day. In parallel to this population growth, housing demand increases rapidly. Thus, different countries try to meet the needs of housing by creating multifarious housing policies. Generally, these policies have been developed according to countries’ special conditions and the developments in the world. Iran is also a country, which has a rapid population growth and has developed series of policies to solve the housing problems. Affordable housing is one of solution for providing the house by governments. These type of houses is the ways to answer the demand for low-income people or the people that their income is not sufficient to owner a house. Since 2007, government has built new type of affordable housing in different cities of Iran. These houses are named as Mehr Housing, which are generally medium and high-rise buildings for low-income people. In this study, it is intended to make an evaluation about the strengthens and weaknesses of Mehr Housing projects in Iran in terms of housing quality. In order to evaluate the architectural quality of Mehr Housing projects in Sarvestan, Abadeh, Nourabad, Firoozabad, Hashtgerd, Zahedan, Tabriz, Hadishahr, Marand, Zanjan, Yazd and Natanz physical analysis method is used as well as literature review. These analyses are mainly done based on location and accessibility, safety and security, public open spaces and recreational activities, plan layout of housing units and physical features. By this discussion, it is expected to create a guidance for the policy makers, designers, users and other shareholders.

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A Discussion on Affordable Housing Projects; Case Study Mehr Housing, Iran * Ph.D. Candidate MARYAM GHASEMI 1, Dr. NAZIFE ÖZAY 2 1, 2 Department of Architecture, Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta, via Mersin 10, Turkey 1 E mail: maryam.ghasemi@cc.emu.edu.tr , 2 E mail: nazife.ozay@emu.edu.tr A B S T R A C T Housing is one of the basic needs for humans. Families in different countries with various cultures, who have different life styles respond to their individual needs including physical and mental in a safe place that is called house. The world population is increasing day by day. In parallel to this population growth, housing demand increases rapidly. Thus, different countries try to meet the needs of housing by creating multifarious housing policies. Generally, these policies have been developed according to countries’ special conditions and the developments in the world. Iran is also a country, which has a rapid population growth and has developed series of policies to solve the housing problems. Affordable housing is one of solution for providing the house by governments. These type of houses is the ways to answer the demand for low-income people or the people that their income is not sufficient to owner a house. Since 2007, government has built new type of affordable housing in different cities of Iran. These houses are named as Mehr Housing, which are generally medium and high-rise buildings for low-income people. In this study, it is intended to make an evaluation about the strengthens and weaknesses of Mehr Housing projects in Iran in terms of housing quality. In order to evaluate the architectural quality of Mehr Housing projects in Sarvestan, Abadeh, Nourabad, Firoozabad, Hashtgerd, Zahedan, Tabriz, Hadishahr, Marand, Zanjan, Yazd and Natanz physical analysis method is used as well as literature review. These analyses are mainly done based on location and accessibility, safety and security, public open spaces and recreational activities, plan layout of housing units and physical features. By this discussion, it is expected to create a guidance for the policy makers, designers, users and other shareholders. CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS (2018), 2(3), 137-145. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2018.4728 www.ijcua.com Copyright © 2018 Contemporary Urban Affairs. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction From the ancient time till now, one of the most important needs of human after the food is shelter. Dwelling could protect people from cold and hot weather, risk of animals and in other words a safe place for resting and comfort (Weihe, 1990). Besides, housing meets the psychological and social needs of users (Evans, 2003). Due to increasing population of the cities and suburban areas after the Industrial Revolution, the housing become one of the most important and essential problem of people (Aldrich, 1995). The most important factors, which help to solve lack of housing is supplying the land, attention to the construction material and powerful management (Mazloom Khorasani, 2011). Housing problem exists in every country. However, it is more serious in third world countries related to political, economic, social and cultural factors (Pour Mohammadi, 2014). From the other point of view since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, “the right to adequate housing” was introduced as an important component of “good living standards” (Assembly, 1984). Thus, each government imposed special rules and regulations in field of housing (Schill, 2005). They take action to establish ministries of housing in order to allocate funds and policy formulation, regulation, programs and special projects in the housing sector (Hulchanski, 2002). As a developing country, Iran also has special effort on housing problem. The first attempt in this way is creation of the Ministry of Prosperity in 1964. After that, the Department of Housing and Urban Development was established in 1974 (Rasoolimanesh, 2013). Furthermore, according to the agenda of Second Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat 2) United Nations Ally, which was organised in Turkey in 1996. Islamic Republic of Iran as a member accepted some commitments. These can be summarized as regarding the right to adequate housing, enabling all people have access to appropriate shelter. The other factor in this agenda is to provide legal security for land ownership, mobilizing financial resources and credit and other sources of private and government sectors for social development access to efficient technologies and effective practices (Nastaran, 2010). The right of housing in the constitution stated clearly in Iran. According to 31th of the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is the right of every person and household in Iran to have a house. Government is responsible for those, whose need according to priority. Workers and villagers are the first ones that can benefit from the implementation of the realization of this principle (Saremi, 2012). In socialist countries, despite they produced too many houses but based on increasing housing demand, they still have lack in housing. On the other hand, qualitative indicators in the houses are not suitable (Pugh, 2001). Housing in developing countries also has problems. The fundamental issues of these countries which is the result of use of poor materials in construction, insufficient access to electricity, water and sewage systems (Okpala, 1992). Most of these countries face by the housing illegal production. Sometimes this figure reaches 50 to 75 percent of urban housing units (Azizi, 2004). One of the countries which is faced the housing problem in recent decades is Iran. This problem happened especially after the land reform in 1962 and after the changes in production methods with the growing trend of urbanization (Hesamian, 2004). With the revolution in Iran in 1979, there is no any control on the spread of the cities. Housing in the suburbs gets much more flourished and the tenants that renting the house had much more problem with the rent price. The immigrant from the rural part get settled in the suburb areas (Sharifinia, 2012). In that period house is constructing for personal use not for giving to rent. After the Islamic revolution in terms of quantity the construction of the houses increased but the amount of investment decrease. Because the size of the houses got smaller. With the imposed war the building activities decrease and investment get lower than before in the years 1982 and1983 (Ahari, 1996). There are five programs which were developed after the revolution that in first program the goals are related to the changing the composition construction practices to reach the durable buildings, promotion of housing inventory per capita in the country and directing the production of better quality housing with less infrastructure. The goal of second program is clean policy that is consisting of saving, mass construction and miniaturization (Ghanbari, 2010). The goal of third programme are reducing the average floor area of housing and reduce destruction of dwellings. The goal of fourth program are balance to adequate housing among groups and regions of the country, provide housing for low-income households, provide housing for youth and female headed households and industrialization of the houses construction. The goal of fifth program are housing for low-income people, safe and durable housing, market regulation and coordination between housing policies and land use planning and development in policies and reducing regional disparities (URL1). Provide housing in recent decades, have been one of the most important problems of various segments, especially for low-income families.

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