"I don't want to talk about lowering housing prices," Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai told the "Globes" real estate conference. "I think it is better to ask what society we want to live in. You can't blame all of Israel's problems on housing prices, as if other things aren't important. The Israeli government is naked in the field of housing, because it discarded all of its public construction enterprises - public housing and the state's responsibility to provide shelter to every citizen. Even during the major waves of immigration in the 1950s, when Israeli was poor and inexperienced, the country said that education, health, and housing had to be provided for everyone. That should be the goal today: shelter for every person, not lowering housing prices."
"The government has declared that it prefers to sell the public housing properties in cities in demand, such as Tel Aviv, in order to make money and building public housing in Ashkelon instead. Instead of integrated economically disadvantaged population groups in the city, the government is pushing them away from there through public housing. When the government sold the land in Sarona, it did not spend a shekel of the money it got on public housing. The state is making Tel Aviv a city for rich people, and I'm getting the blame for it. All of this is happening because there is no plan stating exactly what social goals public housing is supposed to achieve. Only we in Tel Aviv are now building housing that is really affordable. I think that a new way has to be devised, but after 20 years, I doubt whether this will happen," Huldai concluded.
"Since the 1970s, the state has abandoned its involvement in the housing market and left it to the forces of the free market. In 1978, 40% of the apartments in public housing were built with full public financing, while the percentage already fell to 20% in 1980 as part of the government's policy of privatizing social services. Are market forces capable of successfully organizing the housing market? Housing is not a consumer good; it is a social matter. It determines what happens in towns and communities and in society as a whole. Even in the most capitalistic countries they realize that this market requires intervention, so that all parts of society become involved and social cohesion is enhanced. In Israel, the trend is in the other direction - less involvement, more homogenous cities - only haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews), only rich people, and labor immigrants in closed communities. For us, a city for everyone is not just a slogan; it's a task to be carried out. There are various tools at the government's disposal for achieving this, but I want to talk today about one of them - affordable housing and public housing.
"The Knesset recently passed a law for arranging affordable housing, but you can't say that this law will really lead to affordable housing. After all, we need affordable housing to provide shelter and a livelihood in the city for those who don't have them, and in order to preserve groups relevant to the functioning of the city. We need policemen and policewomen, teachers, and nurses. Today, they have to leave the city, and a shortage is being created. A teacher finds it difficult to live in Tel Aviv. A teacher cannot rent an apartment there, and certainly cannot buy one, but also does not want to spend an hour on the road from Rishon Lezion to Tel Aviv. They are moving out of the city and are no longer working there.
"Affordable housing has therefore been founded on a format that takes into account the buyer's financial and social situation and various needs of the city. The resources for addressing the subject, however, are unfortunately in the hands of the government. The direction was promising at first, but Israelis always have to mess things up; first of all, they eliminated the income criterion. In practice, they extended the buyer fixed price plan to the rental market. Millionaires can also take part. Will this help someone with no money for housing and also diversify the cities? No. When they talk about affordable housing, they should realize that a 20% discount on housing prices in Tel Aviv does not make it affordable."
Huldai added that the state is getting rid of its stock of public housing, which currently stands at only 50,000 apartments, compared with 170,000 in the late 1970s, while the population, of course, is growing. Almost 1,000 apartments are standing empty, and 2,300 others are not really being used for public housing, compared with the Netherlands, where 38% of housing units are public housing and the UK, where 18% of the housing units are public housing. "The demand is only rising. There are 3,500 people waiting on the Ministry of Construction and Housing's lists. There are also people waiting on the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption's lists, in addition to tens of thousands more I know about who have given up asking. Why did this happen? It's a policy," Huldai complains.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 25, 2018
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