In a brief ceremony in a small room at Sde Dov Airport in Tel Aviv this morning, while scores of Arkia Airlines Ltd. and Israir Airlines and Tourism Ltd. employees demonstrated outside, the official agreement to vacate the airport was signed. The signing concludes years of discussions and arguments over the vacating of the civil and military airfields and the construction of 16,000 housing units on the site in north Tel Aviv.
Under the current timetable, the civilian airfield will be vacated in 2016. "In June 2016, the bulldozers will work on the site," said Minister of Finance Yair Lapid at the ceremony. The military airfield will be vacated in 2017.
Lapid said that the plans called for the construction of many rental apartments. "A large part of the 16,000 housing units that will be built will be rental apartments, under the National Housing Plan," he said. "Home prices are a strategic threat to Israel's young generation, which cannot buy an apartment. We've promised to lower prices and we will do it. We are changing priorities, and have decided that NIS 230 million of the Israel Land Authority's budget will be used to remove barriers in the industry, and will not go to the Treasury."
Lapid went on to criticize mayors, saying, "It is an open secret that some mayors do not want small apartments, and are not promoting projects, blocking housing solutions for local residents. They will have to decide whether they are in favor or against housing solutions for the next generation."
Minister of Housing and Construction Uri Ariel joked about the friction with Lapid over his announcement of the marketing of land for 1,200 housing units in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria. "We are not just building in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, but also in Tel Aviv. We will sell a great deal of land nationwide in 2014, including IDF bases that will be vacated, and will create a new rental market," said Ariel.
It is important to note that while the ministers were citing the Sde Dov agreement as a solution for the housing shortage, the process is far from over. While Lapid was declaring that most of the housing units will be rental units, no proposal for implementing the rental plan has been announced for either the planning or construction stages.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 14, 2013
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