The public housing in Be'er Sheva/Shei Machlouf
It is already difficult to follow all the government's housing plans, but what stands out in all the plans presented in the last decade and also in the plan presented to us yesterday by the Minister of Housing and the Minister of Finance is that the government produces plans that are not at all adapted to the needs of the citizens and even deliberately ignores them when it presents irrelevant solutions.
For years, there has been one plan after another designed to deal with the housing crisis, but none of the plans have any reference to the public that is homeless, so there is no match between the politicians' statements and the problems the public is facing.
It is not enough and even trending to talk about a lack of supply without talking about what supply it is and for whom this new supply is intended.
For example, luxury apartments for NIS 4 million are not lacking in Israel, nor are discounted apartments in areas without employment and transportation, but public housing or apartments for rent at a discounted and controlled price in the city centers are indeed lacking and very lacking, so it is important and necessary to examine in addition to the lack of supply what the real demand and needs of the citizens are .
According to Danny Gigi, CEO of the Public Housing Forum, "I would expect that during a time of war the government would first and foremost try to think about the needs of the entire affected population before coming out with a communication plan.
The war created a huge pressure in Israel of the need for apartments for regular rent and supervised rent, public apartments, and discounted apartments in the centers of the growing cities for those families who were evacuated from their homes and have no chance of buying an apartment and are having trouble meeting rent payments.
In practice, the plan presented by the Ministry of Housing does not deal with any of these problems, neither the rental apartment problems, nor the increase in the supply of apartments in the centers of the big cities, nor the supervision and direct assistance to the families who were evacuated from their homes.
In the plan, there is not even an attempt to think about re-shielding tens of thousands of public apartments that do not have adequate protection or even all the unprotected apartments that caused, among other things, the large evacuations from the south and the north."
"No one counts the families who can't pay rent"
However, the war is not the only reason why needs must be examined before coming up with grandiose plans for the media, and even before the war the gap between the government plans and the needs of the citizens on the ground was evident.
The fact that over 30,000 families waiting for public housing have been living in Israel for many years is not reflected in the government's housing plan, and the lack of this specific supply of public apartments is not addressed in any of the government's plans.
Nor does anyone count the 185,000 families who cannot even pay rent and depend on meager rent assistance provided by the state, and for them there is no increase or treatment of the problem of the supply of apartments that are relevant to them.
Those families, both in public housing and those who received rent assistance, cannot purchase an apartment at the price of a resident and cannot purchase an apartment for NIS 800,000 in the periphery even in their best dreams, and therefore all the government's programs in general ignore this public.
"It's a shame that even in this program of the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, there is no regard for the hundreds of thousands of families who can only dream of buying an apartment and can barely meet the rent payments," says Gigi.
"Israel lacks tens of thousands of public apartments compared to the number of apartments in Europe and the government continues to neglect and eliminate public housing. The government's long-term rental models have also collapsed, so yesterday's press conference is simply a joke because it has no attempt to deal with the real problems of the public."
"An examination of the plan shows us a complete disconnection of the politicians from the needs of housing among the Israeli public and it is probably intended solely for the public relations of the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Housing. A real housing plan in this difficult time should contain the whole of the needs and present a whole of solutions for all these problems that arose during the war And those who have accompanied us for many years," concludes Gigi.
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