The Association for Housing Culture assists in the renovation process for housing committees, low-income neighborhoods in the periphery and for youth centers and community centers
A building at 13 Janusz Korczak Street in Acre before and after the renovation
Photography:
Courtesy of the Housing Culture Association
The Housing Culture Association serves as an address for tenants in shared buildings on many issues, one of the main ones being the need for repairs and renovations.
A peeling exterior wall, a problem with the common plumbing, or simply the need to renovate and give the building a new and refreshing look - all of these can be addressed in the association's diverse renovation routes.
"The first route we offer is that of the standard renovations that condominium committees are interested in doing," says Tamir Levy, chief engineer of the Housing Culture Association. "Once a house committee is considering renovating the building, he invites an engineer on our behalf to give an opinion: what is the condition of the building, what Need to renovate and how.After the initial consultation the house committee receives the report with the recommendation of the engineer and decides how they want to proceed.
In the second stage, the engineer is invited to prepare a 'bill of quantities' and technical specifications for the renovation: measure the size of the exterior walls, what type of work needs to be done, how many columns need to be reinforced, all the elements of the renovation components.
We measure and prepare a plan, and the house committee approaches with the plan he receives from us for contractors - registered of course - receives quotes based on the bill of quantities and after the tender with the contractors decide who they want to work with.
"Some authorities give loans to house committees, including Rishon Lezion, Ramat Gan, Netanya, Tel Aviv and more. These are loans on the order of NIS 30,000 and more, with a repayment of up to five or six years without interest and linkage. After the House Committee chooses a contractor And all the tenants have agreed that they want to go for a renovation, they come to us and sign a contract, close the whole renovation issue, the amount and how to pay the contractor with pre-defined stations.
"We provide our engineering supervision, which costs 2.5 percent of the renovation amount, depending on the population and the discounts we sometimes give. Tenants can rest assured that we accompany the house committee all the way. "After a year, we make sure that there are no defects in the contractor's responsibility, and when we see that everything is in order, the process actually ends. This is actually the route where the house committee is interested in renovating the building and we help it."
The house committee can also choose the partial renovation route, where only the stairwell is renovated, the roof is sealed or the yard at the entrance is refreshed.
The house committee is required to submit an application, the association checks the data and if these meet the criteria approve the renovation, choose a contractor and get going.
The second track is based on grants that sometimes come from the Ministry of Housing, which go through the Housing Culture Association.
"In this context, the Housing Culture Association issued three calls for proposals, in which we invited buildings to apply for a grant to renovate the building," says Sami Albo, project center at the Housing Culture Association. All the applications submitted were examined by a committee held at the offices of the Ministry of Construction and Housing, and the winning buildings were selected.The Ministry of Construction and Housing allocated NIS 24 million this year for renovation grants to housing committees throughout the country.
"As the executive arm of the Ministry of Construction and Housing, the Housing Culture Association coordinated all the applications and implemented the decisions of the ministry's committee. In some of the buildings, which received grants, completed the renovation work and the rest are in the process."
"The route of the Ministry of Housing grants is intended for low-income populations, in order to give tenants the opportunity to renovate, for example, the facades of the building in full or in part," Levy adds. "Capacity and dangerous buildings, for example when the municipality arrives and issues an order for a dangerous defect, when sometimes the financing also reaches 80 percent of the total cost."
Renovations, for the advancement of youth
One of the emphases in the activities of the Housing Culture Association is assistance to needy communities, and in this framework a recurring neighborhood rehabilitation project was established.
"As part of this route," says Albo, "the Ministry of Construction and Housing has allocated a budget of more than NIS 100 million for the renovation of buildings with a majority of purchasers. This project addresses buildings in the periphery and areas that need socio-economic assistance."
Levy adds that as part of a repeat neighborhood rehabilitation route, the association has carried out renovations in almost 20 municipalities: "The Ministry of Housing and the local authority have selected certain complexes - a group of buildings in the neighborhood rehabilitation area - that need to be renovated. A thousand shekels per housing unit. As part of this operation, we renovated more than 120 buildings to date and we continue to do so. We are in fact the management and executing company according to the plan of the Ministry of Housing. "This is an extremely important project and we hope that the budgets will find a way to continue it."
And if we talked about contributing to the community, it is worth noting the route in which the association is renovating youth clubs and youth centers.
"In recent years, centers and youth clubs all over the country have been renovated with funding from the Ministry of Construction and Housing at a cost of up to NIS 150,000 per club," says Levy. "The Housing Culture Association manages the planning, supervision and engineering support services for these projects. A total of about five million shekels.
"There are also renovations of community centers, youth centers and youth clubs.
We are the executive arm of the Ministry of Housing that provides us with addresses and sites that need renovation where the local authority wants to turn buildings into youth centers, to encourage them to leadership, to excellence, to initiative.
We have renovated more than thirty such community centers and centers. "
Jezreel 18 building in the Galilee landscape, before and after the renovation // Photo: Courtesy of the Housing Culture Association
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