Honorable Minister Goldknopf, warm congratulations on your upcoming entry into the high office.
Unlike ministers in other ministries - as Tzipi Livni called it in the past: "The ministers are for nothing, and the deputies for nothing" - you do not have a hundred days of grace, because you take up your position in the ministry at a time when the fire of the housing crisis in Israel is raging with an unprecedented intensity of rising prices, at a rate of about -20% per year.
So as the Sage wrote: "The end of an act is thought first". Here are some recommendations that reflect the necessary changes to deal with the housing crisis in Israel.
What not to do
Do not hold a press conference when you enter the office, where you will say that you have the magic solution to the housing crisis in Israel.
Don't make any promises.
Not for the drop in the prices of the apartments, nor the washed-up promises of your predecessors "to start curbing the increases in the prices of the apartments".
The number of new apartments sold dropped to a two-year low // Photo: Dodo Greenspan,
Don't give us promises that you will fight the rise in apartment prices - with the 5 kilo hammer, and then with the Congo (and then with the Shovel).
Don't promise to fight the investors either.
The investors are not the "enemy", and they are not the cause of the housing crisis problem.
The investors are part of the solution to the housing crisis, which consists of the residential apartment market and the residential apartment market for rent.
Factually, without an apartment for investment - there can't be even one apartment for rent (and everyone already sees the lack of good apartments for rent, in the form of the sharp jump in rents in the sought-after places as well).
Consult with professional officials, most of their adult lives working in various professions in the real estate industry in Israel: building contractors, appraisers, lawyers, engineers, brokers. Albert Einstein long ago determined that insanity is repeating the same action over and over again (raising taxes, for example) - and every Sometimes expect a different result.
Stop the farce of the lotteries for apartment subsidies without any socio-economic distinction.
It's not just that they don't exist in any country in the world.
Beyond that, the "winners" of those lotteries do not win an apartment, but only an option for an apartment.
For example, they don't know if they won a five-room apartment on the 10th floor facing the sea, or a two-room apartment on the first floor facing the garbage room.
Everything is derived from the random number in the lottery, and in any case - these lotteries do not change anything in the macro data of the lack of residential apartments in Israel.
what needs to be done
Led and implemented (Mena Projector) a strategic government decision to establish a government arm, in cooperation with the Ministry of Housing and the RMI, for the long-term rental of residential apartments under government supervision and price stability, as is done in every middle-class country in Europe (similar to the national housing in Great Britain).
Led by a government decision, in conjunction with the Ministry of the Interior and the Treasury, to pay significant sums to the local authorities against every building permit they issue, and in practice - for every residential apartment.
Any municipality that receives a government grant from the treasury - as if by magic, all the objections of its leaders to the construction of additional apartments in its territory will disappear.
Talk to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
The stereotyped thinking inside the box has exhausted itself.
Enough raising taxes - it's time to try something new.
thinking outside the box.
The writer specializes in real estate and represents construction companies
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