Abdolreza Golpayegani, the Iranian regime’s Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development, described the issue of informal settlements as serious and reported that currently “around 6.5 to 7 percent of Iran’s population lives in the outskirts of cities.”
In an interview with the state-run ILNA news agency, published on Sunday, February 23, Golpayegani described the situation in Razavi Khorasan Province (mainly Mashhad), Sistan and Baluchestan, Hormozgan (Bandar Abbas), Khuzestan, and Tehran as “more critical.”
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He stated, “In some cities of Tehran Province, the figures and statistics for informal settlements are very high. We are witnessing informal settlements within Tehran itself, and this phenomenon has spread into the city’s urban boundaries. In areas such as Islam Abad Valley, Farahzad Valley, Oqaf neighborhood, Khak Sefid, southeast Tehran, and parts of District 19, informal settlements are expanding.”
Experts and researchers have long attributed the expansion of informal settlements in Tehran and provincial capitals to the concentration of resources and business centers in these cities.
However, according to the Deputy Minister of Roads, the primary cause of informal settlement expansion in Iran’s eastern provinces is drought—an issue the government has been unable to resolve in recent years, leading to its worsening.
Golpayegani stated, “In the eastern provinces of the country, the common factor behind the expansion of informal settlements has been prolonged droughts, which have occurred over the past 30 to 40 years.”
The regime’s Deputy Minister of Roads did not provide current statistics on informal settlements in different provinces. However, in 2022, the state-run ISNA news agency, citing the Statistical Center of Iran, reported that “more than one million people in the four cities of Zabol, Zahedan, Chabahar, and Iranshahr in Sistan and Baluchestan Province live in informal settlements.”
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Iran’s Welfare Organization had estimated the number of informal settlers in the country at 12 to 13 million in 2016 and approximately 19 million in 2018.
Earlier, Iranian media had reported that housing construction in the capital had dropped “to its lowest level in 23 years.”
In May 2024, Ahmadreza Sarhadi, a housing expert, warned in an interview with the state-affiliated Entekhab website about the phenomena of “shared housing” and “rooftop sleeping” in Tehran, stating that people’s incomes do not “match” housing rental prices.
The rise in housing costs in Iran in recent years has led to the expansion of informal settlements and the emergence of phenomena such as “grave sleeping,” “rooftop sleeping,” and “shared housing.”
He stated, “Some people cannot even afford to rent a house in the lower-income neighborhoods of Tehran. Renting a 50-square-meter house in Naziabad [located in southern Tehran] now requires a 1 billion rial (approximately $1065) deposit and a monthly rent of 100 million rials (approximately $107).”
It is worth noting that the minimum wage for a worker with two children is 110 million rials (approximately $117).
