I am not a prophet, I am not a prophet, nor am I a sycamore bull, as the prophet Amos puts it, but I unfortunately anticipate a very realistic scenario of a bloodbath in the streets of Israel that will be carried out not by Hamas terrorists or underworld representatives, but by normative family members and retired From one rented apartment to another and lost their souls from the lack of chance to ever get to the apartment.
I came to this insight over the past month, when I attended several conferences and events in the real estate field, attended by government ministers, and in all of them I witnessed stormy demonstrations that were on the verge of violence, both verbally and physically. Homeless In contrast, the protesters of 2021, a decade after the social protest, are in a distinct cross-section of elderly family owners as well as retirees aged 60 and up.
In my opinion, this is not a coincidence.
The statistics of the homeless are growing year by year at a dizzying pace.
If in 1991, when about 4 million people lived in Israel, there were about a million homeless people, ie every fourth Israeli, then today out of 9.5 million Israelis, about 3.2 million, ie more than every third Israeli (!) Is homeless.
Moreover: a survey we conducted at the Contractors' Bureau reveals that a very significant percentage of the homeless are not only young people under the age of 40, who have long since given up on the dream of an apartment, but those aged 50 and 60 plus and above.
The reason for this is quite simple: the housing market, like the rest of the economy, was privatized during the 1980s and 1990s, and public construction has actually moved from the world.
The possibility of hundreds of thousands of hard-working families, who in the past could at least get to the apartment of Amidar, Halamish, etc., has passed away, without any replacement.
At the same time, the lack of an alternative to a public apartment, or at least a long-term subsidized rental apartment, has during these three decades seen a real rise in housing prices by an average of three and a half times.
In other words, an average apartment that cost about NIS 500,000 in 1990 now costs about NIS 1,750 million.
And if in 1990 it only took about 60 salaries to get to the apartment, today it is about 180 monthly salaries.
The expected scenario of a continued lack of housing supply will only exacerbate the demonstrations raging in the streets of Israeli cities, to the point of actual violence among those hundreds of thousands of family members and retirees who simply have nothing more to lose, because they have lost hope and faith in government decision makers.
I recently proposed to Housing Minister Zeev Elkin, and even talked to him again during a peaceful conference in stormy demonstrations, to significantly increase the supply of housing, this by increasing the building rights in each and every project by 30 percent (Shebs Kahlon), with which the contractors will retire 20 percent in favor of discounted housing for those eligible and another 10 percent in favor of discounted long-term rent according to criteria and price determined by the State of Israel.
This action, in my opinion, will not only significantly increase the supply of housing in a relatively short period of time and create the inventory required for subsidized and discounted housing for those eligible, in addition to the stock of apartments for rent at a discounted price, but also prevent the apocalyptic scenario of bloodbaths in Israeli cities.
For the attention of decision makers!
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