Haifa Municipality in the TMA test
The protest of the residents of Ramat Hashabi against the wild policy of the Haifa Municipality's TMA 38 is rising to a real protest. Ramat Hashabi is a quiet and closed neighborhood, whose residents are used to living in peace. This neighborhood is characterized by low-rise buildings and narrow streets. This has always been the case.
6 floors in a flat neighborhood
...in recent years, the Haifa Municipality began to promote TMA 38 plans in the format of evacuation and construction, which changed the face of things in the small neighborhood and created increasing tension between the residents and the decision makers in the Haifa Municipality.
Generally, it can be expected that evacuation-construction plans will increase the value of the houses and the entire neighborhood, since new buildings are being built, including apartments with a higher value than the average in the neighborhood. Residents with higher than average financial ability enter these apartments.
But in the case of Ramat Hatshebi, even before the TMA plans began to materialize, there was already a parking shortage in the small neighborhood. In recent years, the construction of additional buildings, rising to a height of 6 stories, has been approved.
The headquarters of the struggle
The residents of Ramat Hatshebi established a struggle headquarters, in order to represent them in the planning committees and try to minimize the damage caused to the apartment owners as a result of the construction plan in the neighborhood. At the emergency headquarters conference, to which I was invited, different alternatives were brought up by the residents, when on the one hand alternatives of a fight with the municipality were examined and on the other side alternatives of coordination with the municipality were examined. At this point, the residents decided to try and get into litigation with Mayor Yona Yahav and Hadva Almog, who is in charge of the planning administration. As part of the litigation, the residents' representatives will try to bring their growing plight to the decision makers and will be required to take into account a ratio of at least two parking spaces per apartment, in every new apartment that is planned in the neighborhood.
In addition, the residents will raise before Yona and Hadeva a demand for creative planning which is intended to solve the parking crisis that already exists today.
Ambiguity in the planning process
At the head of the operation headquarters is the head of the neighborhood committee, Mr. Avi Roth. Avi Roth reviewed before the residents who came to the meeting the variety of plans that are currently being implemented and the plans that are in the planning process. The review reveals that much of what is hidden over the visible and in fact in the hands of the residents of the neighborhood in general and in the hands of the action committee in particular, there is only partial information about the municipality's plans regarding the future of the neighborhood.
This situation of missing information and planning ambiguity is a situation that we recognize in a variety of neighborhoods throughout the city of Haifa. The residents who bought properties with the best of their money do not know, for the most part, what the plans are that the Haifa municipality promotes in their neighborhood. As a result, property owners are in a situation of lack of control regarding the future of their neighborhood in general and the future of their properties in particular.
At the end of the meeting, Avi Roth reported that a meeting with Yona Yahav, the mayor of Haifa, was arranged for the neighborhood committee. At the meeting, the representatives will try to reach an ongoing agreement with the Haifa municipality regarding the future of the neighborhood.
As for the building at 35 Ovadia Street: this is a building for preservation for which developers have submitted a plan for the demolition of 15 units and the construction of 44 units. You can find details about the building conservation plan in the following article
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More photos from Ramat HaTshebi
