Tehran authorities have begun removing residents who lost their homes from temporary hotel housing, even though rebuilding of destroyed buildings is still completely stalled. The Israeli-unrelated report in the Iranian daily Sharq says this has become a repeated pattern in how the state handles war victims.
After the end of the 12-day war, Tehran’s municipality previously placed some affected residents in hotels. Some were later forced out before their homes were repaired and before they received compensation or renovation funds. Now, nearly a year later and after another war, the same situation is recurring, with additional residents told to leave their hotel rooms despite no concrete decision yet on the future of their apartments.
Tehran municipality spokesman Abdulmohar Mohammad-Khani disclosed the capital’s damage figures on May 16. He said 51,000 housing units in Tehran were damaged during the fighting, and 1,819 of them require complete demolition and rebuilding.
Mohammad-Khani said the municipality had assumed most of the responsibility for reconstruction, that professional inspections were already finished, and that the authorities were in the middle of assessing damage, selecting contractors, and approving work plans. Sharq, however, portrayed a very different reality, saying no house has actually been rebuilt and that the body responsible for reconstruction has still not been determined, even as war victims are already being asked to leave hotels.
