The big flop - Habiva Reich Street in Haifa • "We felt like living here"

Tenants in Habiva Reich claim: whoever approved so many urban renewal projects without looking holistically at the neighborhood - the number of parking spaces, infrastructure and quality of life, destroyed the neighborhood

In the Ramot Ramez neighborhood there was a great opportunity, which was missed. The neighborhood was very neglected, it was mainly inhabited by elderly people and students on rent, due to the proximity to the Technion. Little by little, the understanding took shape that the way to upgrade the neighborhood and make it attractive is through urban renewal projects.

The whole neighborhood is undergoing urban renewal

In Ramot Baramez they decided to bring all types of urban renewal. In one building it was decided to evacuate, condense, build, and in the other buildings the evacuation is the well-known construction. The entire neighborhood was built before 1980, so there was no problem from that direction. The problem came from an unexpected direction. The Haifa municipality did not understand what might happen in the neighborhood, which is all going for urban renewal. Of course, neither the residents who signed an agreement (the residents who lived in Remez before the urban renewal projects) nor those who bought an apartment in one of the projects, did not imagine what was going to happen. Residents cannot be blamed for lack of understanding, we are not professionals, but the professionals can certainly be blamed.

Blame what? Here is the explanation: Let's say there is a neighborhood with 100 houses and one building going to urban renewal. Instead of a 4-story building, there will now be a 7-story building. Will it harm the neighborhood or the residents? No. But imagine a situation where half of the houses one after the other are going to urban renewal, this is where the terrible damage to the residents' quality of life begins.

Living inside a construction site

Let's put aside living on a construction site for over a decade. Let's ignore the incessant traffic of trucks at all hours of the day, the dust, the noise. Let's just look at parking lots and infrastructure. Remez residents talk about how they get home and then start making more and more turns with the car to find parking. In some projects, tenants get one private parking space, but today many families have more than one vehicle. There are also projects without parking lots at all. Think what happened to the number of vehicles in the neighborhood. Before the houses in the neighborhood were 3-4 stories high and the number of apartments was about 10, today there are many high-rise buildings with 4 apartments per floor, and the number of vehicles has doubled and tripled. The number of vehicles has increased greatly, but the amount of parking has not changed.

Finishing a day's work and starting to look for parking...

Over the years, the residents of the neighborhood have turned to the mayor of Yahav and now to Klish Rotem to take lots that are still vacant and turn them into parking lots. All kinds of votes and meetings and talks were held, but an improvement in the parking situation - this is not. When you talk to the residents of Remez, you immediately understand that this is the main problem. Everyone talks about how bad it is to return tired from their place of work at 17:00 and certainly after and then start walking around for another half hour - an hour to find parking. Everyone talks because they came to live in the neighborhood to improve their quality of life, they wanted new apartments and a green environment, and in the end they found themselves suffering.

The neighbors' bedroom - from the balcony

The residents of the neighborhood cannot be blamed. They came to sales meetings and were only shown the building where they were going to live. In practice, the sales offices did not show them the other planned buildings. Around the designated building, most of the sales offices have painted lawns, when in practice the construction in Ramez is very dense. Moreover, there are tenants on the sixth floor of one building, for the sake of the example, who thought they were buying an apartment when the other buildings would be far away from them, because that is what they were shown in the sales office. In practice, when they are sitting on the balcony, a meter away from them is the balcony of a nearby building or even a bedroom.

Leaving the neighborhood

"We are now about to move from the neighborhood," Mirit, in her 40s, who has lived in the neighborhood for 5 years, told Hai Pe reporter, "My husband and I were looking for a nice area to raise our children in. We were debating between several neighborhoods, and there were pros and cons to each neighborhood, and what What we liked about the hint was that the neighborhood really looks like a new neighborhood with all the clearing and construction, and the price was also reasonable. There are schools and gardens near our house, there is greenery all around, in short we liked it. But we were really naive. We heard some complaints about how difficult it is to find Parking, but then we had one car and private parking and hoped for the best.

"A little while after we moved into the apartment, we bought another car, and this is where the problems started. Those who parked in the parking lot went straight home, but those who didn't had to start making rounds in the neighborhood and at some point decide whether to park far away or continue making rounds. Into this you have to include shopping and the children. It's really It sucks to park half a kilometer from home and start walking after a long day of work with shopping in hand. And the same goes for returning in the evening with the kids, when they're tired and just want to get home and you can't find parking."

"No one thought about quality of life"

"What finally broke us," Mirit continues, "is that all our friends from the neighborhood were already tired of contacting the municipality, touring the neighborhood and looking for solutions. So we decided to move and leave this unpleasant experience behind us. The thing that annoys me the most is that if anyone thought about quality The life in the neighborhood, before he gave all the approvals to these TMA's, none of this would have happened, and maybe we would have stayed to live there."

"Takes away the desire to live here"

"I have a double problem," says Lilach, a mother of 3 children from Habiva Reich, "I didn't come here after the urban renewal projects, I lived here before. It was a really magical street. Few tenants, a quiet street, we were very satisfied. The population too It was very pleasant. The street today is neglected and dirty, there is no lighting in the gardens, and no matter how many times we go to the municipality and how many tours we do here - there is still no lighting and it is scary to walk through the gardens home. The most difficult problem, I am tired of talking about it, is the parking problem, it's simple Takes away the desire to live here. If I find parking, I feel like I've won the lottery. After all, the contractors here received funds from the state to improve the infrastructure, but left the street like a construction site. One example is a wall built by the municipality at the end of one of the projects. An ugly wall too And also blocks so many parking lots."

"There is no one to talk to"

"This street is just a dream," Lilach adds, "even when we already have ideas on how to get more parking here, there is no one to talk to. Every time we contact the municipality, we are met with the response that there is no budget or that what we asked for does not belong to the municipality - once an electric company, once Hot and once Bezeq How much power can a person have who works hard, maintains a family and a home, after all this to start these endless appeals to the municipality. It took us 3 years to download a public phone that stood abandoned like this. There is not a time when there are not pigs in the crowds, it just blows. The street is full of excrement And dog urine, and the property tax is high. All the time, the bins here are upside down. Corners that used to be cute corners have turned into a concentration of bins. We asked for blue and white markings for the residents of the neighborhood - they rejected the offer. To expand parking markings - no, to arrange sidewalks - no, nothing, nothing."

The municipality's response will be attached when received.