An Old Woman Walking Down the Street/ShutterStock
Following the first publication in Walla on the cut in rent assistance for immigrants and senior citizens, which was approved yesterday (15.1) in the 2024 budget, social organizations are distributing a position paper in which they oppose the government's decision, which they claim is a direct blow to one of the weakest populations in the State of Israel.
We will explain: In 2022, the total implementation of the rental assistance budget for immigrants (senior citizens and non-senior citizens) was about NIS 800 million. In the proposed budget for 2024, this item will be budgeted at NIS 870 million. According to the decision makers' proposal for the balancing plan for 2024 in the chapter "Adjustments in eligibility for rental assistance for immigrants," the government plans to cut this budget by NIS 40 million, about 5% of the total budget.
In the position paper, signed by the following social organizations: the Public Housing Forum, the Adva Center, the Forum for Immigrant Families, the Clinic for the Rights of Holocaust Survivors and People in the Elderly, and the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University, the organizations write: "This NIS 40 million cut does not uniformly affect all those entitled to rental assistance, but directly harms the assistance provided to one of the most disadvantaged population groups in Israeli society – new immigrants. Headed by new immigrants who are senior citizens."
Givatayim apartment where time stagnated in the 60s / Courtesy of the subjects, Nikki Truk
As part of the budget proposal, the Finance Ministry seeks to reduce rental assistance for immigrants who are senior citizens by distinguishing between immigrants who arrived in Israel 10 years before retirement age and immigrants who arrived earlier in life. In addition, the government decided to limit the number of times immigrants can refuse an offer of public housing, and instead of an unlimited number of refusals, it was determined that they would be allowed to refuse only 3 times, without giving a satisfactory explanation as to why they should reduce the number of refusals.
"Clearly, as we will see in this document, this is another step of removing the state's responsibility from the basic right to shelter, and therefore it is argued that this decision must be rescinded immediately. Moreover, the opposite must be done – mechanisms must be put in place to ensure fair rent assistance for the entire population," the organizations write.
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Rent Assistance: A Failed Mechanism That Harms Hundreds of Tenants
The position paper compiled by the organizations shows that there are currently 185,000 eligible people in Israel who receive rental assistance payments. The assistance is given to those who do not own an apartment and who meet a number of criteria for receiving the assistance (senior citizens, immigrants, disabled people, income pension recipients, etc.). The amount of assistance is determined by parameters of eligibility criteria, age, number of family members and area of residence. According to data from the Ministry of Construction and Housing for 2021, about 48% of those eligible for rental assistance are immigrants.
"Before we talk about the severe harm to immigrants and immigrants who are senior citizens, it should be remembered that the rental assistance mechanism is, as a rule, a problematic and harmful mechanism that does not work properly, and is therefore intended to be only a temporary solution until public housing is received," the position paper states.
"The first problem is the erosion of rental assistance amounts, which have not been linked to rental prices. Against the background of the increase in rental prices over the past 15 years, the share of average monthly rent assistance declined from 30.1% in 2007 to 24.7% in 2022. Thus, instead of taking care of the basic right to shelter, the government removed its responsibility for shelter for the disadvantaged public, thereby abandoning hundreds of thousands of families to a predatory free market of housing."
"Moreover," the organizations write, "a substantial part of rental assistance is nothing more than a 'conduit' for transferring money to landlords. The Bank of Israel published a comprehensive survey on the subject and showed that globally, between 50% and 90% of housing subsidies go to apartment owners who raise rental prices in light of the assistance provided by the government and do not really reach the weaker people."
Givatayim apartment where time stagnated in the 60s / Courtesy of the subjects, Nikki Truk
Of course, raising prices not only harms aid recipients, but also all apartment renters, because it leads to a general increase in prices. The Ministry of Finance itself addressed this in response to criticism voiced by the State Comptroller in a 2015 report that the amounts of aid had not been updated for many years.
In response to the criticism, the Ministry of Finance responded that the reason for the opposition to updating the amounts of rental assistance is that "updating the amount of rent participation, even in a small amount, for such a large number of eligible individuals, entails a very heavy burden on the state budget." The Finance Ministry also noted that "recipients of rental assistance constitute about 25% of all renters in the economy, and increasing the assistance is liable to affect prices in the entire market."
This indicates that the harm to immigrant senior citizens expected from the planned cuts only adds to the existing injustice, which stems from a mechanism that in any case has failed and has been harming the entire homeless population for many years.
The signatories here strongly oppose the proposed cut in rental assistance budgets, and reiterate the call to link rental assistance to market rents. In addition, it is clear to all that the real problem is the shortage of public housing apartments, which leads to the need to make use of the failed mechanism of rental assistance, the very use of which is nothing more than a concept that needs to be replaced.
Harm to apartment renters Senior Citizens - especially in times of war
The war affected hundreds of thousands of families and significantly exacerbated the housing crisis that had already plagued tens of thousands of families before the war. Hundreds of thousands of families have left their homes, mainly in conflict zones, and many of them also refuse to return to these homes due to the impact and trauma of the war.
Many of these people and families are not landlords who will have to rent apartments in new places, and many of them are landlords who will have to rent apartments. It is clear that this crisis will lead to a significant increase in rental prices in all the major cities to which "refugees" from all the cities of the conflict have flocked.
"This situation requires not a cut, as proposed in the Finance Ministry's proposal, but rather an increase in the amounts of rental assistance, in order to meet the basic need of families to obtain a roof over their heads immediately, and certainly not to harm homeless immigrant senior citizens, who are already in a difficult situation, some of whom are evacuated from the conflict zones, and some who recently immigrated to Israel due to increasing anti-Semitism." Summarize the social organizations that signed the position paper.
Limiting the number of refusals for immigrants waiting for public housing
No less cynical move by the Finance Ministry is the attempt to limit the right of immigrants to refuse uninhabitable apartments, the organizations write in the position paper.
In light of the fact that the vast majority of those waiting for public housing on the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption's lists, and particularly those receiving increased assistance, are immigrants and senior citizens, this group will be severely harmed by this proposal. This population is particularly weak – these are senior citizens who live on allowances only, most of them have not had time to accumulate pension rights, many of them do not speak Hebrew and have low digital literacy. All these factors lead to a population that finds it difficult to realize its rights and survive economically in the Israeli reality.
The refusal of those waiting to receive apartments does not take place in a vacuum. For years, the maintenance of public housing has not been adequately budgeted, and the maintenance condition of many public apartments is extremely deficient. There is no shortage of testimonies, studies and articles dealing only recently with the criminal neglect of public housing by government ministries and by the housing companies and companies operating the housing clusters.
Already in 2010, the State Comptroller's report stated that "the housing conditions of residents of public housing are severe and cause a violation of human dignity, in addition to the damage caused to property and the fear that physical harm will be caused to the point of endangering human life." In the housing clusters in particular, the State Comptroller found in 2019 that there are many hundreds of apartments whose size is lower than the minimum set by the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption.The Public Housing Forum receives thousands of inquiries about destroyed apartments that are uninhabitable, and even sees tenants' resistance to accepting and living in these apartments. Tenants rightly refuse to live in apartments that the State Comptroller has declared several times uninhabitable, and also refuse to live in apartments that are not adapted to their basic needs.
To this it should be added that as far as housing clusters of the Ministry of Absorption are concerned, there are no basic specifications for the maintenance of the apartments and their supervision has been found to be ineffective, to say the least. The Ministry of Aliyah and Integration has never presented data on refusals by those waiting and the reasons for refusals, if any.
It should be noted in this context that senior citizens in general and immigrant senior citizens in particular have even more special needs that must be taken into account, such as the degree of accessibility to the apartment and within the apartment, proximity to the community, proximity to welfare and health services, and more. This is why it makes sense that senior citizens were originally given more options of refusal. In practice, it is clear to everyone that an elderly person would not give up a public apartment if it were indeed habitable, and therefore the fact that they are forced to refuse attests to the state of public housing that has been neglected for years, more than to the eligible persons themselves. If you want to limit the number of refusals, you must also include qualitative indicators in the offers received by senior citizens, such as the condition of the apartment, the location of the apartment and the nature of the apartment.
In practice, the refusal mechanism serves to impair the eligibility of those waiting for public housing, both veterans and immigrants. In many cases, the housing companies offer residents destroyed apartments in distressed areas, knowing that the tenants will refuse, thus depriving them of their entitlement to increased rental assistance and the responsibility for their housing will be removed from the authorities. As far as the Ministry of Absorption is concerned, there is no definition of what constitutes a suitable apartment, and in any case there is no provision requiring the Ministry to ensure that every proposal offered to the person waiting will be different from the previous one, so that in fact 3 neighboring apartments can be offered in the same building and floor and the eligibility of the person waiting will be revoked.
According to data presented to the Aliyah and Integration Committee at the beginning of 2023, there were about 300 vacant public housing units for immigrants, many of which are in various stages of occupancy. This means that the move in question may not lead to almost any budget cuts, unless those waiting are systematically offered apartments that are unsuitable and they will be forced to refuse them even at the cost of losing their eligibility.
In any case, in fact, the Ministry of Finance seeks to blatantly intervene in the policy of the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration not to limit the number of refusals in public housing, without laying any appropriate infrastructure for this – without publishing procedures and specifications for public housing activity for immigrants, without determining the definitionA suitable apartment, without examining the information available at the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration and without defining the required difference between various proposals that will be offered to those waiting, etc.," the organizations conclude.
Granting increased assistance only to those who immigrated up to 10 years before mandatory retirement age
"This proposal is not at all clear," the organizations write. "It's not clear to whom it seeks to apply, what the logic behind it is and what its purpose is. Here, too, it has not been clarified whether this refers to special increased assistance granted to those waiting for housing clusters or to another group."
According to the procedures of the Ministry of Aliyah and Absorption, as well as publications by the Knesset Research and Information Center, eligibility for public housing for immigrants is granted according to those who immigrated up to 15 years before the date of submission of the application. The Finance Ministry's proposal to limit increased assistance to those who immigrated up to 10 years before mandatory retirement age will create separation within the waiting list, without any relevant difference between them. The proposal will create complete chaos when it seeks to introduce the mandatory retirement age as a factor affecting the amount of rental assistance a person is waiting for, even though this figure has no relevance to eligibility.
It should be emphasized that the increased assistance is given to those waiting for public housing and the state is unable to house them in a suitable apartment suitable for their needs. This has no relevance to the age of immigration. As long as the state does not offer those waiting proper solutions, it must pay them an increased rent.
As far as can be understood from the wording of the resolution, those who will be harmed will be those who immigrated to Israel when they are aged 47-57. It is not at all clear what the logic is for harming this group – people who immigrated to Israel at an older age, had difficulty integrating into it, encountered discrimination recognized in the labor market and desperately need housing assistance.
"This violation has no internal logic or evidentiary basis and must be canceled immediately," the organizations that signed the position paper demand.
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