Over the past four decades, housing policy in Iran has been predominantly framed around programs aimed at the provision and production of housing units. Rather than evaluating the effectiveness of these policies, this study examines how the concept of housing is represented in Iranian housing policy discourse and explores the relationship between this representation and the notion of dwelling. Drawing upon a conceptual analysis of Article 31 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Law on the Organization and Support of Housing Production and Supply, the Housing Production Leap Law, and major governmental programs including Mehr Housing, the National Housing Action Plan, and the National Housing Movement, the study demonstrates that, despite differences in their implementation mechanisms, these policy documents share a relatively consistent conceptual framework. Within this framework, housing is primarily understood through concepts such as production, supply, land provision, and housing units.

To critically examine this conceptualization, the study employs the phenomenological perspectives of Martin Heidegger and Christian Norberg-Schulz as its theoretical framework. Their distinction between building and dwelling, as well as between space and place, provides a critical lens through which housing can be understood not merely as a physical object to be produced, but as the existential condition for human dwelling, identity, belonging, and lived experience. The findings suggest that the fundamental limitation of housing policy in Iran lies not primarily in the implementation of policy instruments, but in the conceptual construction of housing itself. Consequently, the paper argues that any meaningful reconsideration of housing policy requires a shift from understanding housing as a physical housing unit toward understanding it as the possibility of dwelling.