Member of Knesset (MK) Michael Biton, chairman of the Committee for the Strengthening of the Negev and the Galilee, is preparing to submit three lawsuits to the Supreme Court against the state-owned Amidar construction company and the Ministry of Housing for violating the rights of public housing residents. "The state is choosing to pursue economic development and profits at the expense of those who are waiting [for access to public housing,] and it's a crime," Biton tells Davar.
At a special meeting of the committee chaired by Biton earlier this month, the deputy director of the Property Division of the Ministry of Housing, Michal Tzadok, claimed that the Ministry owns about 500 housing units in the north and south of the country that are unoccupied because they are defined as apartments for improvement. The apartments are intended to undergo renovation as part of urban renewal processes, and therefore the Ministry has not filled them, despite the high demand.
"We found out that the apartments have been empty for seven years; instead of giving those tenants an apartment, the ministry spends money on rent assistance," Biton said. "Instead of renovating and committing to finding the tenant an alternative apartment when urban renewal begins, they do the opposite and allow the complexes to stand empty. They attempt to justify this on the grounds that in the future, they will renovate the apartments."
Despite the serious complaints against Amidar, Eli Ben Meir, CEO of the company responsible for 38,000 public housing units, chose not to appear in the Knesset and explain the company's conduct. Ben Meir is the fifth CEO of the company in a period of less than three years, and he was appointed to the position last November. "Committees have no power to impose sanctions and therefore, a senior official in a government company can allow himself not to attend," Biton said. "This disdainful attitude is a result of the fact that there is no Minister of Housing who is willing to fight for public housing." According to Biton, this decision is part of a broad Ministry policy that greatly burdens those waiting for housing, a waiting list which currently includes some 6,000 applicants who have already been deemed eligible.
As a response to the company's actions and policies, Biton told Davar that he intends to lead a class action lawsuit against Amidar and the Ministry of Housing on three issues. One is aimed at Amidar and focuses on the urban renewal processes around the absorption center in the Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem. The absorption center is one of the largest public housing complexes in Israel with approximately 190 units, and is expected to triple in size as a result of urban renewal processes in coming years, and yet, the number of housing units that will be allocated to public housing within it will not increase. "There are about 800 people waiting for apartments in the city of Jerusalem alone – it is possible to allocate half of the 1,000 new apartments for public housing in that complex alone," Biton said.
A document released by the Knesset's research center last November criticized the conduct of the Ministry of Housing, which for years has struggled to increase the supply of public housing for a number of reasons. The explanation is not limited to budgetary problems; in fact, the budget for new housing has doubled in the past year, meaning Amidar could have allocated new units in the absorption center to eligible applicants rather than selling them.
Biton also shared that he intends to petition the Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn the decision of the Minister of Housing, Yitzhak Goldknopf, not to extend the public housing law which allowed those eligible to purchase public housing units at a significant discount. In addition, together with the Forum for Public Housing, Biton is formulating a class action lawsuit related to hundreds of complaints from tenants in public housing that Amidar is not renovating their homes.
This article was translated from Hebrew by Noah Mirkin.
