1-Introduction The supply of affordable housing for every citizen is an important governmental policy with a particular consideration of low- income groups. This group of residents would not be able to provide independent housing without governmental intervention. Social housing program is regarded as an effective policy in the pursuit of justice in accessing to proper housing in many parts of the world. The Mehr social housing program as supportive housing and social policy has been implemented to meet the housing needs of low-income classes since 2008 in Iranian major cities. So far, the Mehr housing project has been influential in changing many aspects of the urban systems, and consequently impacting on social, economic and environmental characteristics of them. The evaluation and criticism of this policy from different aspects to set up the goals and actions for the future planning is essential. According to the evaluation report of the Iranian Ministry of Road and Urbanism, by the end of 2012 Fars Province ranked the third in terms of social housing production. And at the end of 2012, the average progress in the implementation of housing projects in this province was reported by 80 percent. Totally, Fars province authorities are committed to build 112 thousand units. The structure of this paper is as follow: the first part includes the introduction, state of the problem, the objectives of the research, and the theoretical and conceptual background of the research. Subsequently, the method of the research and analytical approach of the collected data are presented. Discussion and conclusions are provided in the final section. 2-Theoretical bases Housing is not only regarded as a physical entity for living but also as an economic good and service. It also has a social role including a set of services covering the life. Housing as a residential environment can be studied from different perspectives. Housing is a social creature which provides most of the needs a family. Each housing unit is a representative of social and cultural identity. A suitable housing environment provides a place for rest and makes people mentally ready for the next activity. Social housing is equal to affordable rental property which is planned for low and middle income groups. This type of housing is administrated by the government, non-beneficial agents or cooperation estates of both of them in order to providing affordable shelter. Social housing may provide only basic and primary needs, while other aspects of life such as psychological, social, aesthetics, are neglected. Three dimensions of sustainability which should be considered for housing include: economic, social and environmental. In this paper, only economic and social aspects are investigated. 3-Discussion The importance of investigating the socioeconomic characteristics of households arises when housing planning is conducted. In this way, those who are from low-income group should be carefully considered because of their lower economic power to afford proper housing. In fact, most of low- income households need financial support and subsidy to improve their status of housing. The primary results from the analysis of 384 questionnaires collected in five sampled cities are below: the average household size is different among the residents of five cities and ranges between three and five. This difference shows the necessity of different housing planning approaches in different geographical regions. The ratio of household to housing unit is close to one for all sampled cities. For most of cases, men are the head of household. The average age of household age is about 36 years and the results confirm that owning a property takes longer time in bigger cities due to higher price of housing in such cities. About 30 percent of those who are the head of household have an academic degree; therefore, social housing is welcomed by this group as well. The job type of the head of households is a mix of white-collar and blue-collar jobs; however, the later one has a greater share. Around two-third of residents have had no earlier living experience in apartments, rather they were in single family houses. Also most of them used to live in rental houses. This is the main reason to leaving former place and moving in to social housing. Interestingly, rental cost is the most important factor which encouraged the residents to move out from their former places. Other causes such as getting closer to workplace are in second priority. In regard to income level, the majority of the residents of Mehr housing projects belong to low-income groups who need financial support to afford housing. The government has been successful in providing about 30 percent of housing cost. Most of residents' previous places of living were not in good and safe conditions; therefore, Mehr housing projects provide them an opportunity to live in better situation. For further analysis of collected data, some statistical tests including Smirnov-Kolmogrov, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and LSD were used. 4-Conclusion Because of large geographical extent of Mehr housing projects, it is required to investigate different dimensions of this housing supply program. This paper is about the social and economic impacts of Mehr housing residents throughout Fras province. For this purpose, five cities including Shiraz, Firouzabad, Abadeh, Noorabad, and Estahban which are located in different climatic and geographic situations were selected and 384 households were surveyed. Some of interesting findings of the returned questionnaires which resulted from descriptive and analytical methods include: According to ANOVA result, Noorabad and Firouzabad are two cities with higher level of social coherence. This is probably due to the greater homogeneity of ethical groups live in these cities. Participation level was found highest for Shiraz residents. This is probably due to having had better access to the information of housing projects and better involvement. In terms of overall satisfaction level, residents of Estahban were found to have greater level, due to limited number of residents who lived in apartments with higher quality. 5-Suggestions Mehr housing policy based on mass affordable housing by reducing the cost of land and offering supplementary funds is suggested in order to controlling the housing market. The review of the literature showed that using tax policy is necessary in addition to increasing housing supply. Therefore, supporting of housing production and supply should be associated with controlling for price and inflation in housing market. Enabling the capacity of all professional companies and non-governmental agencies in housing supply can improve the quality of construction thus giving more opportunity to the government for controlling the market. The satisfaction level of residents would increase if daily land use services get improved within Mehr housing projects. Furthermore, the result of this research can be used for future procedures of social housing planning in order to emphasizing local and cultural needs. This research can be extended by including further dimensions of the social and economic consequents of social housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]