This week, the Jewish Agency, the Construction and Housing Ministry and the Finance Ministry, approved a new agreement.
The said agreement will see 3,000 affordable shelter homes built across Israel for elderly tenants.
The elderly
While the government has already achieved success in increasing the overall number of new housing, they still have to develop public housing that has been specifically created for fulfilling the needs of the elderly.
The free-market housing sector in Israel is known to have a high demand due to a growth in the population and limited supply.
Therefore, recent years have seen the housing prices have shot up in the country. One of the sectors that is highly underdeveloped is low-profit social housing and public housing, including sheltered housing.
There are a limited number of projects that are focused on providing older people as well as other vulnerable populations with affordable homes.
On Tuesday, the new joint project was announced, which will see 1,500 new homes that will be built in areas all over the country.
These include Tel Aviv, Lod, Hadera, Ra’anana, Netivot, Beersheba and Nof Hagalil. In a later phase, there will be an additional 1,500 new homes delivered.
A similar agreement had been made in 2016 with the Jewish Agency and a total of 2,600 homes had been developed for older citizens in need.
The management
Amigour is the Jewish Agency’s subsidiary that focuses on public housing in the country and it will manage the sheltered housing units.
It will also have the responsibility of the allocation and construction of these homes and will also deal with the ongoing support and maintenance for residents.
Avigdor Liberman signed this agreement as the finance minister, which was one of the last ones to be made before the new and 37th government of Israel was sworn in on Thursday, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to the former finance minister, the project would provide public housing to those who are in search of affordable homes.
The former construction and housing minister, Ze’ev Elkin said that the project would help increase the public housing stock.
He said that the older population was two-thirds of all the people in line for public housing.
The numbers
According to the statistics put forward by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), there are a total of 1 million people or more in Israel who are aged 65 or above.
A social survey had been conducted by CBS last year, which showed that 20% of these people are struggling to get by.
In December, a new poverty report had also been published by Latet, an Israeli aid organization. It discovered that there were about 2.6 million Israelis who were living close to or below the poverty line.
It discovered that the elderly population of Israel was particularly vulnerable and part of this number. This highlights the importance of providing them with housing, as they seem to be in need.
The new project aims to accomplish this goal.