(live here in real estate) - 4 years since Dr. Einat Kalish Rotem assumed the position of mayor and it seems that the new construction in the city is proceeding lazily and with very limited dimensions. This is especially noticeable when you look at the situation in the nearby cities - in Carmel Castle, for example, it is developing and growing at an impressive pace as whole new neighborhoods are established there and attract more And more young families, likewise in Kiryat Yam, Kiryat Bialik, Kiryat Ata and Nesher, many construction starts are seen in the area.
In November 2021, the new outline plan for the Carmel Castle was deposited, which talks about an addition of 11,000 apartment units in the city - that is, an addition of about 70,000 residents, three times (!) the number of residents that currently exist in the Carmel Castle.
Thus, in recent years, new construction has been taking place in the southern part of the Carmel Castle, more and more high-rise buildings are being erected at the southern entrance of the city and attract housing developers from the city and of course those who come from other cities, among them many who leave Haifa in favor of the Carmel Castle, who choose to enjoy the advantages provided by their new place of residence : clean air, proximity to the train and the sea, property tax relatively low compared to that of Haifa and, of course, a new apartment in a new neighborhood that is adapted to all their needs.
In Kiryat Bialik, new buildings are being erected in the Afka neighborhood, while constructing access roads and public buildings that will serve its future residents, with the plan being to build 1,600 new housing units.
In Kiryat Yam, urban renewal of an impressive scale is about to take place, especially in the old Shapira neighborhood, which according to the plans will become the "Riviera of the North" and will add to the city thousands of new housing units accompanied by new access roads, recreational facilities, green spaces and all the most modern urban infrastructures necessary.
From the data of the Central Bureau of Statistics, it appears that 46.5% of construction starts in the period from October 2021 to September 2022 were in Tel Aviv and the central region, compared to 8.2% in the Haifa district. During this period there were 9 settlements in the country where over 2,000 units started to be built. While Haifa is not one of these cities, in Ashkelon and Beit Shemesh they did start building more than 2,000 units. In the months of October 2021 - September 2022, construction started in Tel Aviv 5,484 units, in Jerusalem 4,000 units, in Beit Shemesh 3,287 and in contrast in Haifa only 821 units.
"Real estate prices in Haifa continue to climb"
The Central Bureau of Statistics recently published data on the increase in real estate prices in Haifa in the months of October November 2022, compared to September October 2022. This is a 1.9% increase in housing prices between the two periods. This increase is significantly higher than the increase in real estate prices in Tel Aviv during the same period, which stands on only 0.9% and in the central region in general, by 0.6%. At the same time, Jerusalem recorded the highest price increase - 2.4%.
A comparison between the transactions carried out in the months of October-November 2022 and the corresponding period of the previous year, shows an increase of 20.1% during the year. In the other regions of the country the increase is also in double digits, but in Haifa it is higher than in Tel Aviv, the center and the south.
The connections between the municipality and the government offices
In October 2022, a conference was held at the Mount Carmel Hotel in Haifa with the participation of then Minister of Housing Ze'ev Elkin. At the conference, Elkin spoke harshly against Kalish Rotem and said that the issue of construction in Haifa is a painful issue. while noting the great potential for urban renewal in the city, and pointing out the gap between the accelerated pace of urban renewal in the cities near Haifa, compared to the explosions in which Haifa is located.
This is not the only time that the complex relations of the mayor of Haifa with members of the government and ministers came to the surface and they were met with difficulties on her part and a lack of cooperation on her part.
At the end of the term of the previous mayor, Yona Yahav, funding was obtained from the Minister of Transportation at the time, for the construction of roads from the closed neighborhoods to the coastal road, the need for which arose as part of the lessons learned from the fire in November 2016. In the end, during the term of Kalish Rotem, the funds were no longer up to the city's credit, and Kalish Rotem requested Because a finance committee will take care of financing one of these roads from the municipal budget.
"These are very bad results for the State of Israel"
The president of the Boni Ha'aretz Contractors Association, Raul Sargo said in response to the data of the Central Bureau of Statistics that these are very bad results for the State of Israel. "The data proves that the housing market is on hold only because of the high interest rate. In our estimation, in the summary of 2022 we will see construction starts that will range around 60 housing units only. About 20% less than what the government expected."
"The government must understand that the number of Israelis seeking to purchase apartments is only increasing, but that they are afraid to take out mortgages at high interest rates. At the same time, contractors are also afraid to build because of the high cost of loans to finance construction. This is an emergency and the continuation of the downward trend in construction starts may produce the next jump in apartment prices."
The residents are desperate
In Haifa there are many housing developers who are waiting for approvals for urban renewal projects or for new construction. In some cases there are already approvals for the project, and construction has not yet begun. One of the projects awaiting the start of work is the neighborhood that is being built for the winners of the "Price for the Resident" project, near the Neot Peres neighborhood, currently known as "Naot Peres B". The works in the field have been at a standstill for several years, with the debate over who is responsible for regulating the infrastructure for the neighborhood - the municipality or the state.
There are also residents who received a demand from the municipality to repair their homes, for example in Kiryat Eliezer and the Yezraelia neighborhood. These are very old houses that are mostly inhabited by hard-to-find people who will have difficulty obtaining funds for this purpose. What's more, many times these buildings are destined for demolition.
Ramat Gural - there are permits, no construction
In order to approve the construction plans for Ramat Goral, one had to deal with hundreds of objections for years - the residents of Haifa submitted about 1,500 objections, each of which had to be dealt with. The neighborhood is supposed to have 2,000 units between the Ramat Eshkol and Dania neighborhoods. In December 2021, the long-awaited approval for construction in the neighborhood arrived, but in practice since then there has been no progress in construction. Land owners in the neighborhood and residents who are interested in seeing new neighborhoods built in the city signed a petition calling on the municipality to promote construction in the meantime There are no results.
The residents are disgruntled that as long as they dealt with the objections and there was no permit to build in the neighborhood, it was clear why they did not get on the ground and start working, even their claim is that the permit to build has been in place for over a year and things are still not progressing.
Waiting more than 20 years
If there are neighborhoods that know what the wait for urban renewal is, then surely it is Neve David and Shaar Aliya. In the Neve David neighborhood there are residents who have been waiting for urban renewal for over 20 years. At every town meeting they described their frustration. Some are still waiting and some of the projects in Neve David have come to fruition. Again and again they asked, don't they deserve to live in a new house with a balcony and an elevator? On Harotem Street at Shaar Aliya, all the residents are unionized and waiting for eviction and construction permits. If an apartment is put up for sale, it already embodies the price of the value after the urban renewal, but the apartment owners are not in a hurry to sell the apartments, because they are sure that this is going to happen soon.
Borovsky: "Construction permits are being delayed contrary to the law"
Retired superintendent Yaakov Borovsky, who announced his candidacy for mayor, claims that the Haifa municipality is knowingly delaying building permits in violation of the law. "This was done for extraneous and serious considerations. The professional level became a contractor executing or not executing construction plans according to personal tastes.
"Haifa suffers from a small policy of construction starts. Today there should have been 25,000 housing units as part of the urban renewal. Beyond the fact that new construction is an instrument and lever for absorbing housing improvements to Haifa, it is also an important economic instrument of levies, fees, improvements, property taxes. Why all This is happening? The city captains have the solutions. The delays and confusion led the housing developers to Tirat Carmel, Nesher, Kiryat Ata, Kiryat Bialik, Kiryat Motzkin and Kiryat Yam.
A friend of mine recently said that Haifa has been suffering from a management curse of mayors for the past 20 years. The professional level is also complicit in the failure in that, instead of standing by its opinion in granting building permits and urban renewal, it bowed to the whims of the decision makers. The city engineer had to raise an alarm, and the same is true for the people of urban renewal and legal advice. Today everyone cleans their hands and blames each other. Unfortunately, this is about missing one of the most important growth engines in Haifa."
Yahav: "Haifa cannot compete as a district city, due to the lack of development"
The former mayor, Yona Yahav, says that not carrying out the continuation of urban development and building new neighborhoods makes Haifa a city poor in resources and residents. According to him, this undermines its ability to compete as a large provincial city.
It should be noted that during Yahav's tenure as mayor, in the years 2003-2018, urban renewal began and the Turkish market and the lower city were renovated. In addition, the Ramat Hanasi and Nevet Peres neighborhoods were built in the southern entrances of the city.
20 years ago, if you had told the residents of Haifa that the lower city would become an urban recreation area, it is not certain that the residents would have been able to accept the idea. For many years, there was life in the lower city only until the afternoon hours, when the offices were active, after that the lower city was almost deserted. But Yahav, with the help of the person who managed the barge division, Tzachi Tarno, who was also the head of the lower city administration, managed not only to renovate, but also to bring new life to the area, and make Hamam Street one of the most vibrant streets in the city.
"There is less development and less urban renewal"
Attorney Sharit Golan Steinberg, member of the city council: "At the meeting of the Planning and Construction Committee there was a discussion of only two hours, not a few requests were submitted for discussion. In the past, every meeting of the committee would last for long hours with discussions of dozens of applications and requests for permits, and this is actually the sad story of Haifa."
"There are no applications, there are not enough plans that are brought before us, and we see it on the ground, in practice. We also do not see income from improvement levies and development fees, and this means that there is less infrastructure development in the city, we do not see large plans for urban renewal. I hold talks with residents in the neighborhoods Many in which houses are about to fall from being demolished already for the promotion of urban renewal plans. They wait two, three and four years without a response. This is the situation in Haifa.
Unfortunately, the mayor did not make it a first priority, she is mainly busy working on Power Point presentations, but in the end if she does not take care of the engineering manager and makes sure that the plans are prepared properly and quickly then this city will not develop."
Third or fourth city in Israel, in terms of construction less than a development town, shame!!
Morot Goldstein has been waiting for the municipality since 2016 - including court intervention and nothing has moved. Officials and a mayor who maliciously delay new construction.
Bat Galim has been waiting for construction since 2014 - a plan combined with the Ministry of Housing and once again officials and the mayor who are delaying implementation and construction has not yet begun.
No competent civil entity prosecutes those responsible and they do not give justice for the suffering and damage they cause to the residents in this conduct. There is no law and no law.
On this we go to change the leadership and nothing moves.
What remains to be seen - when the manager will stop abusing the residents.
In the US, for example, an entrepreneur comes up with a tractor to carry out up to a maximum of one year after submitting a plan. In Haifa for 10 years and nothing has been closed. - Shame on all the clerks and mayors and members of the city council.
Mayor Kalish will pay for the handouts in the upcoming elections. There is a great shortage of apartments in Haifa and Haifaites are moving to the Carmel Castle, Nesher and the Kiryat. I don't know another city in Israel that has negative immigration. There are many construction plans that are deliberately stuck and developers and land owners are forced to go to court to get relief. I am well aware of the construction plans on the slopes of Lincoln, the court intervened and set the city officials timetables to promote the construction, but they are not being met. Let's hope that in the upcoming elections a young and energetic mayor will be elected who will bring about the change.
During the hearing of objections to the Ramat Gural plan, the rights of some of the land owners were denied. A petition they submitted to the court was received. It is now required to hear the objections again. In any case, it cannot be said that the plan has been approved. In addition, in any case, the plan states that only 30% of the plot owners will be able to build (how will they choose?) and who will pay for the development?
In the southern entrances, the outline plan of 2000 stipulated that a neighborhood park would be built in an area of 100 dunams. The free space for a park in the south of the neighborhood has not yet been planned. The planning authorities will now have to decide whether to build the park there as approved in the outline plan or to approve apartments for residents in the park's place, and at the same time compensate the current tenants who knew that a park would be approved. The beauty is that the money from the sale of the land is taken by the state and the money to compensate the tenants is paid by the municipality. A dream incarnate.
Renewal is not wild construction in Carmel as the contractors want
Renewal is maintaining texture, nature, quality of life
The current construction in Haifa is the destruction of the city, so it is better to describe it outside the borders.
By the way, Haifa's neighbors are full of role models..
Khalas propaganda of pig contractors
I wonder what was there before the construction
Yes, there is a real lack of gray tombstone-like buildings around the city, this is what will boost Haifa. Hello Periphery.
A city of eye-rollers. Just a few weeks ago, we read here about opposition to construction in Carmelia because of a eucalyptus tree, attracting contractors for decades. Neighbors in Carmel, under whose apartments there is a whole city of illegal construction, prevented me from building on my lot because they objected like that. Over 20 years. The residents themselves are the factor that leaves Haifa behind and after that they try to blame everyone but themselves. Opponents of an airport. In short, Haifa is a city of opponents.
The worst mayor Haifa has ever had.
stuck the city. 4 years later nothing has been done, shocking roads, no urban renewal, dirt everywhere, pigs, traffic jams in the neighborhoods. And the audacity wants to use the residents' funds to pay for performances for Independence Day. Hundreds of thousands of shekels that should have gone to the welfare of the residents of Haifa.
Until now the residents of Haifa have not internalized that the mayor of the city is Kalisz. It is a nature reserve. against anything that harms nature. And it doesn't matter to her if her residents are harmed. She is purely in favor of nature. It's with the wild_pigs. No dilution. New construction does not approve. Anything that would even slightly harm the interests of the residents. She is anti Haifa residents. And by what kind of worm you will be affected. God willing, an access road will be paved that is convenient for the residents. She is in favor of the worm. Although this worm is harmful to the ornamental trees that have existed for decades!
Kalisz failed in managing the city, and fought all the wars that were not hers, made self-interested political connections, and failed in taking care of old buildings that tend to collapse, did nothing for the quality of life in needy neighborhoods, excluded herself from taking initiatives to build and develop the city. Unfortunately the grade failed. This time all of us, just not Kalish.
A trending article on behalf of Hamdani Havaniya. The whole article is full of cheap demagoguery.
All the speakers in the article called urban renewal should first learn what real urban renewal is, instead of spouting hollow slogans empty of content.
It is strange that there is no mention in the article of the "unique construction method" in the Carmel Ridge in which the volumes of the buildings are tripled in violation of TAMA Law 38, while cutting down thousands of old trees and replacing them with hideous and ugly concrete blocks.
The process of destroying the unique textural coloring in the Carmel ridge began as early as the time of Yona Yahav and continued until this day's fast. Habiva Reik Street must change its name to Yona Yahav Street, as a sad reminder of Diraon Olam.
Monstrous and dense construction in the Carmel neighborhoods without the development of access roads, without the widening of streets, without the construction of required public buildings, buries the city along with its tremendous natural potential.
This is how you destroy a city, this is how you don't build a city!
Building for housing improvements is a recipe for failure - because who will enter the shared apartments? A slippery slope down the socioeconomic ladder. If Haifa wants to grow, it needs to be a center of attraction for employment, level and quality of life, education and more. Just to build is to give a living to the contractors and the city's drudgery - see Karmiel, see Nahariya...
joins Galbhart. In Haifa, there is no demand for thousands of units because there are no employment opportunities that support massive growth, and besides that, demand is scattered among the metropolitan cities that are building many new neighborhoods, so there is no housing shortage and there is a full response to demand and even an excess of construction.
Regarding Haifa itself, the article comes out at an awkward time and is simply not related to the reality on the ground, and I will explain:
1. Benue David has begun the evacuation of a huge construction of the Azorim company with 1200 housing units.
2. Yesterday there was an announcement about the Prashkovsky project at the level of the president with 900 units.
3. In Givat Zemer dozens of projects are under construction with hundreds of units
4. Benue David is building 2-3 towers of sandalwood with hundreds of units this year.
5. Building permits for thousands of apartments in a number of evictions and construction in the neighborhoods of the coast and Neve Shanan already exist
6. 6000 units in preparation for the start of construction in Neveot Peres on the third.
7. About 200 Tama 38 projects that add 2000 apartments in the ridge.
8. Zeevi project in Megiddo in the center of Carmel 3 apartment towers.
9. The Verdia Slopes project, the continuation of construction
So please Michal Grover is expected to check data, you can claim what you want and interview interested parties, contractors and failures from the past, or those who push for the bad construction on the slopes of Golda and Givat Aizim, but there are many construction starts in Haifa in the coming year even without all of these.
It is true that those who want to live in the Carmel neighborhoods have to take into account the large increase in prices in particularly sought-after neighborhoods in the last two years. This is the situation in all Israeli cities and is not related to the Klish policy or to Haifa in general. This is a general situation of rising construction inputs, wages in the economy, importing construction workers, rising land prices, and the greed of contractors and owners of inflated budget pensions in the economy who are hoarding apartments for investment.
Hai Pa gives an extensive and exclusive platform to the sector that has interests in the field of real estate. This is not what Haifa needs and wants, on the contrary! For the benefit of Haifa and its residents, a different approach is necessary, not to bury it under a mass of dense construction. To present a correct and reliable picture of the subject freed from the interests of Those interested, a few lines in the comments section are not enough, but more than that is probably impossible, the entire stage is at the disposal of the real estate sector, all the interviewees, all the commentators. A one-sided picture is being received here that is contrary to the real interests of Haifa.