The phenomenon of self-built housing in the peripheries of metropolitan areas reflects the inadequacy of formal housing policies in addressing the needs of low-income urban populations. Adopting a qualitative approach and employing thematic analysis, the present study examines the lived experiences of self-builders in peri-urban villages around Mashhad. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 24 residents who had independently constructed their own homes over the past decade. Analysis of the data led to the identification of five main themes: "contexts," encompassing poverty, rising housing costs, the land and housing price gap between the urban core and the periphery, lenient construction regulations, and access to infrastructure; "enabling factors," comprising kinship networks and skill capital in the construction domain; "motivations," including escape from tenancy, reconstruction of social status, and forward-looking investment; "strategies," consisting of informal financing, incremental and low-cost construction, and negotiation with regulatory institutions; and "outcomes," involving coexistence with physical hazards, a dual dynamic of social withdrawal and integration, and hidden social costs. The findings indicate that self-built housing is a multidimensional phenomenon that, beyond its function as shelter, performs roles such as "spontaneous social security," reconstruction of identity and social status, and acts of resistance against deprivation. These settlements, having emerged under a condition of "practical tolerance" by formal institutions, occupy a position of "semi-formality" and have become "spaces of opportunity" for the urban poor. Accordingly, the prevailing concepts of "self-built housing" and "self-help housing" prove insufficient to capture the full identity, welfare, and resistant dimensions of this form of habitation, and the application of the concept "self-creative housing" may offer a more comprehensive account of this phenomenon.