In Israel’s capital, families living in public housing are fighting for their rights. Government endorsed urban renewal processes are expected to begin this year, with tenants expected to be evicted without any assurance of being provided with alternative housing. Residents are accusing the Ministry of Housing and the Jerusalem Urban Renewal Administration of violating their rights to adequate compensation, as well as obstructing current residents’ ability to purchase their apartments before the renewal processes begin.
Back in 2016, Israeli authorities adopted a plan to empty out and rebuild a public housing complex in Gilo, Jerusalem that had once served as an absorption center for new immigrants. At that time, Amidar, a state-owned housing company, owned more than 200 public housing apartments in the building—by now, that number has fallen to 180. Residents accuse the state of refusing to sell apartments to the residents at the discounted price they are eligible for in an attempt to prevent the residents from being eligible to live in the project once it is rebuilt.
In the new project, which is expected to earn the state 300 million shekels (about $80 million), only about 10% of the apartments will be designated for public housing. Residents fear they will end up displaced, potentially outside of city limits.
“They are now initiating a huge project in which they will build over 1,000 apartments, with the aim of continuing this push, when at the end of the process they will probably try to strip the tenants of all their rights in public housing,” Danny Gigi, secretary general of the Public Housing Forum, told Davar. “The 700 people waiting for public housing in Jerusalem and the Ministry of Housing will not be granted even one additional apartment in this huge project.”
In one of the apartments set to be evicted, Georgi Irmadze lives with his wife, child, and mother. Irmadze moved into the apartment seven years ago to care for his mother, who has Parkinson's disease and needs close supervision.
In 2021, his mother received permission to purchase her apartment at a discount under the Public Housing Law, but in trying to exercise her right, she was met with obstacles from the Ministry of Housing, and the process came to a standstill. The Ministry of Housing eventually allowed the purchase, but by then the law had expired, the price had skyrocketed, and Irmadze’s mother was unable to purchase it.
“Buying the apartment would have assured my mom’s housing security,” Irmadze told Davar. “She wouldn’t have to worry anymore about rising rent, or being kicked out. She could keep living here in Jerusalem, on her own terms.”
After looking into what their future may be if his mother is evicted, Irmadze discovered that there were about 700 people waiting in line for public housing in Jerusalem. Now the family fears that when the urban renewal is all said and done, their family will not receive an alternative apartment in the area.
Irmadze's story is not unusual. Another 180 families live in public housing apartments in the area, and the state is obligated to provide them with alternative housing in Jerusalem when the evictions begin. Since the urban renewal project was first publicized, dozens of public housing residents in the neighbourhood have attempted to purchase their apartments from the Ministry of Construction and Housing, but most have faced roadblocks.
Two years ago, Minister of Construction and Housing Yitzhak Goldknopf denied the extension of the Sales Law, a law that allowed low income families to purchase their apartments at a discount. Now, not only does that discount no longer exist, but the state has sharply increased the price of the apartments—adding a percentage of the cost of renovations to the price of the old apartment.
“Prices offered to current tenants to purchase their own homes are starting at about 2 million shekels,” equivalent to more than half a million dollars, Mordechai Kantorer, a leader in the residents’ struggle whose family lives in the area, told Davar. “These are unreasonable prices that have nothing to do with public housing. These are elderly people, disabled people, and new immigrants we’re talking about, who simply want to secure their ability to stay in their own apartments, but they can’t. No one will sign any contracts with them or promise them anything throughout this urban renewal process. In the end, they won’t have an apartment, and the government will leave them stranded.”
According to the Government Urban Renewal Authority Law, anyone who rents a public apartment in a complex set to undergo urban renewal will be able to rent an apartment in the complex once construction is completed, move to a public housing apartment elsewhere, or receive an apartment in a state-funded assisted living complex. Ostensibly, public housing residents in the complex will always have the option to return. But according to Kantorer, because of the severe shortage of public housing apartments in the city, he fears that the Ministry of Housing will push residents to stay in the temporary apartments they have moved into, and in the worst case scenario, even find themselves outside the city.
“There is already pressure from contractors to push public housing out of here. If we had managed to purchase the apartments, no one would have told us anything. Now everything depends on the mercy of the Ministry of Housing,” he said.
Kantorer is in similar battles against the Ministry of Housing and Amidar, a state-owned housing company. He hopes to purchase his family’s apartment and has spent the past decade reviewing dozens of applications from complex residents who tried to purchase theirs but were refused on various grounds.
Chief among the reasons families failed to buy their apartments was the endless bureaucratic delay on approval of the discount they were ostensibly eligible for.
Noticing that many families received rejections with similar wording, Kantorer began to fear that this was a widespread move by the state and Amidar, seeking to thwart the residents from purchasing their apartments and being eligible to remain there after the urban renewal process.
That fear grew following the struggle of other residents of the complex against the eviction plan and the authorities’ aggressive response to it. “They feared that they would be joined by more residents with voting rights who would vote against the entire project,” Kantorer explained.
Knesset Member Michael Biton of the National Unity party initiated a discussion on the topic in the Knesset’s Economics Committee two years ago. The discussion raised concerns that the urban renewal project was meant to remove public housing from the area. The deputy director general of housing at the Ministry of Construction and Housing said that it was better not to have too much public housing in one place.
In an interview with Davar in August 2023, Biton said that the state would prefer to have cash in hand from the sale of the apartments and use that money to purchase public housing, rather than maintaining public housing in the same complex.
The Ministry of Construction and Housing told Davar that it had examined the residents’ claims that they had been blocked from purchasing their apartments and said that it found no proof of such a thing. “We would also like to note that in all of the cases submitted, documentation was found that the applicants requested to withdraw their application or did not complete the registration process or pay the fees for the purchase application,” the ministry said.
This article was translated from Hebrew by Etz Greenfeld.
