The committee established by Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin to review the eligibility requirements for public housing has an important mission. But activists and professionals from the world of public housing warn that without a significant expansion of the stock of public housing units available, updating the criteria for eligibility may lead to a new wave of evictions in order to free up more units.
In general, activists worry that the Housing Ministry could be moving towards an increasingly privatized, voucher-based approach to housing relief instead of investing resources in building new units of public housing to ease the severe shortage.
Elkin’s creation of the committee serves as an acknowledgement that the existing eligibility criteria are convoluted and outdated. For example, a woman who earns minimum wage but has fewer than three children would not be eligible for public housing. If she has three children but earns less than the minimum wage, and therefore receives supplemental income from social security, she would still be ineligible, as would any senior citizen who does not wish to live in a retirement home, regardless of their economic situation.
Elkin promised to establish a committee to review the eligibility criteria in the summer of 2021, and this week, he formally appointed its members. Elkin announced that in addition to examining the possibility of making additional populations eligible for the public housing waiting list, the Ministry will for the first time set out to determine the exact rights of current residents, who have suffered for years from threats of eviction despite their difficult economic circumstances.
At the end of his address, Elkin added that the committee will examine two more potential tracks for offering housing aid: temporary rent subsidies for those on the public housing waiting list, and long-term rentals in government owned buildings. This addition raises several questions as to the government’s intentions to change the way it relates to public housing residents.
“They need to build units for everyone who will need them”
“The point of public housing is that it offers families stability and a pathway out of intergenerational poverty,” said Dani Gigi, an activist and founding member of the Public Housing Forum, an advocacy organization.
According to Gigi, there are currently over 30 thousand individuals who are eligible for public housing, and the number could easily pass 50 thousand if a few changes were made, such as eliminating the requirement for receiving supplemental income from social security or expanding eligibility to those with mental illnesses. But given the long waiting list for units, becoming eligible won’t actually lead to an improvement in anyone’s circumstances.
Gigi worries that because of the drastic shortage of units, the Housing Ministry may move from its current model, in which those who are on the waiting list for public housing receive subsidies to help them pay for rent in private housing, to a model in which subsidies for private housing are the central focus and the government stops investing resources in construction of new units.
“That would be the end of public housing,” Gigi said, as it would effectively amount to the Housing Ministry admitting that it cannot offer a solution to all Israelis in need of housing. Instead, it would only provide marginal financial relief that would end up in the pockets of landlords and enable them to continue charging prices that consumers can’t afford.
One can also gain insight into the Housing Ministry’s intentions by looking at the representatives who will take part in the committee. Of the three public representatives from the legal and professional field of public housing, only Benny Dreyfus, the current director of the National Lottery and former director of the Housing Ministry, has significant experience and familiarity with the complicated eligibility requirements.
While the participation of Alex Friedman, one of the leading activists for disability rights in Israel, as another one of the civilian representatives brings an important voice to the committee, it is hard to ignore the absence of any public housing activists or anyone who has lived in public housing and gone through the long and humiliating eligibility determination process. Other groups that are intimately familiar with the complexities and challenges of the process, such as social workers, community organizers, and welfare officers, are also unrepresented on the committee.
The waiting time for access to public housing currently stands at an average of four to five years, with 500-600 new units becoming available each year. Elkin’s announcement of an additional 1,700 apartment units and 3,000 units in retirement homes will be quickly swallowed up by just a few of the tens of thousands of public housing seekers.
“The Housing Ministry knows this very well. They also know that the Finance Ministry will never approve it,” Gigi said.
One possible solution: long-term rentals
As things stand, about half of Elkin’s goal of adding 7,000 new units depends on subdivisions, renovations, and new openings in existing units.
“These are all solutions that come at the expense of someone else,” Gigi said. “They want to subdivide into smaller units, to give more rent subsidies that will go to landlords, and to further restrict eligibility. Expanding the criteria without expanding the supply of housing will lead to a new wave of evictions.”
Efrat Rotem of the Union of Social Workers added: “Rent subsidies are a tool that is appropriate for helping individuals through short-term crises, but it’s not designed to offer long-term relief to families living in poverty. This could be an opening to further minimize the world of public housing.”
Rotem argues that the government needs to end its use of rent subsidies, which currently stands at 2.2 billion shekels ($701 million) a year. She believes that the reason that rent subsidies have become the preferred tool of the Treasury and Housing Ministries has less to do with their efficacy and more to do with the high degree of control that they offer the ministries.
“The cost of rent is out of proportion to the subsidies available. Women come to landlords without checks or guarantees, making them vulnerable to extortion,” said Rotem.
She believes that while it is not ideal, the option of long-term rentals in government owned housing could offer a temporary solution to those waiting for public housing, especially in light of the present situation in which waiting times are only growing longer.
This article was translated from Hebrew by Sam Edelman.
