(haipo) – Attorney Yael Pinkas, whose office was hit by an Iranian missile about two months ago on Nordau Street in Hadar, was forced to establish a new office on Sinai Boulevard in the estate. As part of the move, she was required to purchase new office equipment on HaNeviim Street, but instead of finding a solution to her needs, she encountered harsh scenes of filth and neglect. Pinkas documented the situation and posted a scathing post in which she criticizes the state of cleanliness in the city and the functioning of the municipality. Her words provoked many reactions from residents, who join the general feeling of neglect throughout Haifa.
It is important to emphasize that Panaks photographed dirt on private land and not on land owned by the municipality. Nevertheless, when Haifa contacted the municipality immediately, municipal workers were sent to inspect the place and, in accordance with the law, the place underwent a comprehensive cleaning in order to avoid a sanitary hazard in the heart of the city.
An innocent visit that turned into a disturbing exposure of urban reality
Attorney Pinkas arrived on HaNeviim Street to pick up a package of office supplies, but was shocked by the sights that befell her. "I found parking immediately and then I was shocked because what I saw before my eyes... a shocking stench, garbage, waste of every kind and kind, a feeling of general decay," she wrote. According to her, this is a central street in the city, which was once considered one of the cleanest in the country, and now looks like an abandoned area.
She described the feeling as "disgraceful," and expressed deep frustration at the gap between the high property taxes she pays and the municipal services she actually receives. Pinkas directly contacted Mayor Yona Yahav, calling on him to come to the scene and examine the situation himself.
Sharp criticism of the municipality's performance in the field of cleaning
Pinkas' post is not an isolated incident. Many residents across the city are reporting a significant decline in the level of cleanliness in neighborhoods, main streets, and public areas. They say trash is piling up at bus stops, playgrounds, and building yards, and the general feeling is one of ongoing neglect.
Memories from the past: A previous tenure with high standards
Yona Yahav, who served as mayor from 2003 to 2018, was previously considered a figure who was particularly careful about the cleanliness of the city. According to residents' testimonies, during his first term, it was customary for Yahav himself to walk the streets, identify defects and ensure immediate treatment. There were even cases in which he came to check whether the cleaning work was carried out properly, after reports. During that period, Haifa was praised for its level of cleanliness and was ranked high in national indexes. Residents speak of a sense of municipal pride, and of a municipality that acted quickly and efficiently.
The feeling of neglect in the current term: Residents express disappointment
According to Attorney Pinkas and other residents, Yahav's current term is not reminiscent of his first years in office. According to them, the city looks neglected, municipal services are inadequate, and cleanliness has become a sore subject for many.
The criticism is not just coming from private residents; business owners, professionals, and active citizens in the city are also expressing frustration. They point out that Haifa, once considered a progressive and clean city, has lost its status and that there is an urgent need to change attitudes and strengthen the cleaning system.
HaNevi'im Street as a Test Case: An Urban Center That Lost Its Status
HaNevi'im Street, where Pinkas encountered filth, is a central street in the city, located in the heart of the Hadar neighborhood. In the past, it was an active commercial thoroughfare, with shops, offices, and extensive public transportation. Today, according to residents, the street suffers from ongoing neglect, a decline in business activity, and a lack of maintenance.
What happens when the pollution is on private land and not on urban land?
It should be noted that in many cases, as in this case, the dirt is on private land and not on municipal land. When a resident calls 106 to complain about filth, they are sometimes told that it is on private land and they find themselves in front of a broken gutter. On the one hand, it is clear that the municipal authority is not supposed to clean up the dirt for private individuals, on the other hand, from the residents' perspective, it does not matter if the dirt and trash are on private land, the main thing is that the city be clean. Moreover, dirt that is currently on private land can very easily fly with the wind and move to municipal land. In order for the city to be clean, the municipality needs to monitor the entire city, private or municipal land, if only because the resident is helpless against his dirty neighbor.
Hanita Street: Another tour reveals serious deficiencies in infrastructure
About a month ago, as part of a tour we conducted on Hanita Street together with a neighborhood resident and a member of the neighborhood committee from the Peretz era, we were exposed to another worrying picture of urban neglect. The street was full of filth, uncollected garbage, and a pungent odor that permeated the air. Furthermore, the pavement in the area was in a dangerous state: broken stones, uneven bumps, and deep depressions that endanger pedestrians, especially the elderly and children. According to Peretz, the pavement had not been repaired for decades, despite repeated requests to the municipality. The tour illustrated that the problem is not a specific one, but rather reflects a broad trend of neglect in infrastructure and ongoing maintenance throughout the city.
Residents demand change: A call to action from the municipality
The reactions to Pinkas' post were not long in coming. Dozens of residents shared her words, responded and added their own documentation. Many of them called on the municipality to act immediately, increase supervision and return Haifa to the level of cleanliness it had in the past. They want to see an organized action plan, reinforcement of cleaning teams, investment in maintenance infrastructure and increased public awareness. According to them, the city's residents pay high property taxes and expect to receive services accordingly.
After Haifa contacted the site, it was addressed and cleaned up by the Haifa Municipality.
The municipality's response: We cleaned up the dirt, even though it was on private property.
An inspection conducted by the Municipal Sanitation and Supervision Department found that this was a private, fenced area and a demand was made for the property owners to maintain its cleanliness. Despite the fact that this was private land, and due to the condition of the place, employees of the Municipal Sanitation Department arrived at the site and carried out cleaning operations.
Usually, Meyerhof Square is thoroughly cleaned twice a year, Rosh Hashanah and Passover.
This year, as part of budget cuts to finance salaries.
Forget New Year's Eve.
If this filth was on private land, the owner of the land can be required to clean up and eradicate the infestation, or fined a large sum.
Fines for anyone who litters
Question - The members of the municipality are elected officials. Who appoints the representatives of the committees in the neighborhoods and according to what criteria? Who supervises their activity or inactivity. What are their powers? In Neve Sha'anan it seems as if no one cares about the largest neighborhood in Israel.
At number 10, Yad Labanim Road in Haifa, there is a grocery store where the waste and filth in front of it crosses all boundaries. Also, up Yad Labanim Road number 30, there is another grocery store, and there is a municipal landfill in front of the store. There is no enforcement. There are no inspectors on the ground at the grocery store at number 10. Cars are parked right at the intersection, endangering pedestrians and cyclists. The Haifa Municipality has filed reports to the housewife, but the inspector is afraid to give a report to the operators of these containers for some reason. The street stinks of dog poop and urine. Why do we even pay property taxes here?
Yona Yahav is not worthy of being mayor!!! He's lost his cool. He doesn't care that the city is dirty and stinks, and he's a disgrace as a mayor. He'll just put the keys in and leave!!!!
100 percent true.
The truth is simple, there is Arab Haifa and there is Hebrew Haifa. Those who want cleanliness and order are welcome to stay upstairs.
Where did you get this idea from?
The other problem for years has been the dilapidated condition of the roads, and even if repairs are made here and there, traveling in Haifa is a journey of obstacles and bumps. When will this difficult problem be solved?
A beautiful, almost international, high-level lawyer who will contact Hot's sales center. Maybe they are also related.
The esteemed lawyer complains, but a quick tour of the mice, rats, and pigs shows that they are happy with the situation and will continue to support the municipal coalition. They explained that they are enjoying the situation...
As I previously stated, the city of Haifa was fun to walk around, plenty of shops, a clean city, etc.
It slowly, slowly became a neglected village, not fun to be in.
It is not worth investing in under any circumstances.
Not in street maintenance work, cleaning
The mayor receives a fixed salary every month.
Receiving medals and the same distinction, for what?
No one demands an explanation from him about the situation in the "village, called Haifa"
So why bother?
The fact that he treated the pigs cruelly is unfortunately what the majority wanted, the rest is no longer important.
As someone who commutes on an almost daily basis by public transportation, I can attest to the fact that the cleanliness of the city is appalling. Even among the housing estates in the Kiryat Eliezer neighborhood, for example, and on the sides of the street – for example, HaHagana Boulevard, Sderot Maginim, in Hadar and other poor neighborhoods, I hardly walk around or not at all, but I assume that there is great neglect there. The trash rolls behind the bus stops on Moriah Street in Carmel, in other places in Carmel and in the estate, the backyard of the National Maritime Museum in Allenby the last time I passed by was a trash area in itself. And also on the steep stairs that go up from HaHagana Boulevard to Allenby and more. There are always snack bags and disposable drinking cups rolling there. The museum yard itself is quite neglected and not at all well-kept. The level of cleanliness of the neighborhood bin areas has dropped and they no longer disinfect or flush them with a hose once in a while like in the past. The number of neighborhood green trash cans on the sidewalks has been reduced, and most bus stops do not have trash cans for small trash, so people leave their trash at the station or throw it in the bushes or behind the station. Cigarette butts are an ugly and repulsive phenomenon in themselves. The neglect is evident, as is the national mood, as is the dust that has accumulated on the trees and ornamental vegetation after a winter with almost no rain and a hot, humid summer. Haifa is a very mixed city, with different cultures, and the population seems to have grown, and not always for the better. The beauty that can be seen from high places or those close to the sea, not to mention the Baha'i gardens on Yaffa Nof Street, is deceptive. It cannot be a well-kept city, nor can it be a resort and tourist city despite its virtues. To this end, more supervision, more care, more cleanliness, and increased patrols by municipal vehicles are needed. Fines for litterers in public areas can be beneficial or a deterrent. It is no longer possible to point the finger at pigs as the main polluters. On the contrary, I see huge watermelon cobs and leftover food that people leave near the garbage cans for the pigs. And the pigs, like cats, will go where the food is. They want to survive. It seems to me that it is easier to demand that the municipality do its part in cleaning the city's neighborhoods and sites than to try to educate people from different sectors and cultures to be aware of their surroundings and environmental ecology in general. Improving the cleanliness of the city and adding neighborhood garbage cans and at bus stops can be somewhat helpful in changing the habits of throwing garbage into the street.
Prophets Street and the surrounding streets are below par in terms of cleanliness!!! Neglect!! Businesses close early!!! Homeless people in the Armon area…
Yona Yahav, keep your promises!!!
Wild boars are a nuisance, but the quality of life in Haifa is declining because of the dirt and neglect, not because of the pigs.!!!
Who invented the myth that Haifa was once clean? I've been here for 40 years and the streets are always filthy. The Carmel is a little cleaner, Hadar and the downtown area are always dirty. Apparently the cleanliness is adjusted to the social and economic status of the residents.
But there are no pigs…haha
Make Hifa grate again, please.
When you read the municipality's response, you can understand that there will be no change, Yona Yahav is asleep at the wheel and simply not interested.
And all we can do is wait for the next elections and hope.
May there be good days and good news.
The city has been filthy for 30 years… Why would that change? Every mayor is elected because we think there really is a choice.
They will do nothing for the good of the city and the residents. They are only interested in their salaries.
We forgot that the government and the municipality all work for us and receive money from our pockets!
Regarding Hanita Street
There was an evacuation of a house near and they threw everything near the trash can.
The evacuation takes place every morning and then passes
The crane can't possibly be there for many hours.
This gives workers a bad name and I applaud that.
I would like to correct the injustice that has been caused.
The root of the problem lies in poor urban planning, when they moved the commercial areas to the malls outside the city center, they effectively sucked the urban energy out of the city center and emptied it into the malls on the outskirts of the urban complex.
The solution is to reduce the number of vehicles moving in the city, increase the use of accessible and inexpensive internal transportation, and encourage walking and shade within the space.
The urban.
At the same time, nationalize the entire central urban space and plan it in a way that will allow it to be redeveloped and to incorporate many diverse, subsidized, and especially cheap services, for the benefit of the citizen, both in terms of the supply of services and in terms of prices, at the expense of the mall culture that has issued a death sentence on the city center... This requires a city leader with steel balls and who will devote himself entirely to the city out of love for the city and its people.
Tell me, you live the reality, Haifa is part of the country and the country looks like an open cesspool that has overflowed, why is Haifa different?
Is that what you're claiming?
Accurate response
The poor planning, which included the construction of more and more air-conditioned shopping malls, led to the collapse of Hadar and enriched the connected tycoons.
For example, Gad Zeevi, by the way, Gad Zeevi is less guilty than the municipality, which allowed the monster called the Grand, I really hope that the lesson has been learned.
The whole city is filthy.
Yona Yahav, even in her previous term, only hung signs about a clean city, but it wasn't clean. Under Kalish, it was cleaner, and streets of urine and filth in the lower city became beautiful, with benches and lighting, so they shouted at her, not at Yahav.
What pills do you use?
The municipality claims that the dirt is due to the children on vacation.
Haifa is a city where most of its residents are elderly. So what kind of children are they talking about here? I don't understand.
Prophets Street was clean and safe as long as Hebrew-speaking Israelis lived there.
As soon as sectors arrived that threw trash into the streets, rummaged through bins, behaved in an environmentally insensitive manner, committed vandalism, and hated the place and the neighborhood, we received the destruction of Hadar and other neighborhoods.
A population that throws trash near the bins = poor education and inferior people with no sense of aesthetics.
Unfortunately, there are also those among Hebrew-speaking Israelis who throw away household contents and old furniture "by the trash can."
In the end, Haifa is measured precisely by main streets like HaNevi'im Street, hence the frustration. Because that's where it's dirtiest and most neglected, closed shops, the smell of urine, vandalism, dirty sidewalks, vehicles blocking sidewalks, and more.
There are places where the separation between private and public space may exist on maps. In reality, this is an area with public access - an extension of the Orhava sidewalk, as in the case of the plaza around the supermarket in Hanita or the plaza between stores in Hanita 22. I learned that these are "private spaces" and the municipality does not maintain them (replacing benches, grilling, gardening). Are they waiting for the store owners or residents of the buildings to take care of the unfenced areas that are owned by everyone??
As if it was ever clean... the dirtiest and most neglected city in the country. Disgusting.
There is nothing new under the sun. It is time for the supervisors of the cleaning workers to go out into the field and see that the cleaning workers are doing a favor by sweeping the dirt. Since dirt is not a magnet, it remains. I am speaking in all parts of the city.!!!
Cheeky – we'll see you working in their place one day
In these hot days
Since it's private space, it's even better.
Clean up (Haifa Municipality)….and charge the property owner. This is a real blow to the city, abandoned houses…causing damage to the city and the environment.
Require investors to maintain a clean area around their buildings and, if they do not clean, charge high amounts.
Every evening, old men come rummaging through garbage cans and throwing the contents of the bags on the floor to collect bottles, clothes and food, with dozens of cats around them. This is a daily occurrence. Prophets Street is not as neglected as the description suggests. I don't think it's on the street. Where exactly is this? I don't know.
At the Atzmon Cinema, formerly
Only North Tel Aviv lives at a high level.
When a lie and a hypocrisy mate, you get a story in your mouth. Yona Yahav never cared about the maintenance of the city. You, with your absurd stories, contributed to his re-election.
You can complain a lot about the municipality and its ordinances, but just as you can't put a policeman on every street corner, you can't send a cleaning worker to every corner at any given moment. Residents should also be responsible for their surroundings, as disdain for public property increases, the result is a dirty city. If everyone takes care to keep public spaces clean as they keep their homes clean, we will have a clean city, otherwise even a thousand more cleaning workers won't help.
Lack of education as a result of ongoing damage to education and educators also brought about the disaster of 7/10/23….The dirt and garbage are just a symptom.
Supervision. If you start putting inspectors in place and handing out reports to everyone who litters, the fines could cover the cost of the inspectors and even add profits to the public coffers. Right now there are no inspectors at all. Many times the municipality also claims that these are private areas when they are public areas.
The one to blame is not the bad municipality nor the bad mayor.
The people to blame are the city's residents who elected a man who was known as a failure and a complete failure!
This is why Klish was chosen – because of the disappointment with Yahav.
And you pay for stupidity….
Enjoy the dirt and grime…
You are right in every word!!!! Whoever chose him, may he suffer in silence. It is impossible that in Haifa, a city with many scientists and field activists, they could not find a better candidate than Yahav, the friend of the contractors…
Cameras throughout the city. Return on investment within 5 minutes. A city of lazy people lacking vision and ability.
Recommendation: Buying at KSP is cheaper and there is a delivery option.
This is what a city looks like with a population that lacks culture and self-discipline. This is what a city looks like whose population expects everything to be done for them. This is what a city looks like with a man who has grown old and tired at its head.
Really terrible!!!!
Haifa, which has always been the cleanest city in the country
Looks like one big Salem neighborhood.
We expected much more from Yona Yahav.
The dirt and waste did not come from the sky. They are man-made. If a resident finds it appropriate to throw his trash on the street and not in the garbage carts, he should not complain to the municipality. Only when the garbage carts are not emptied on time and overflow, is there definitely reason to complain.
Did you mean to say that Ofer from Geula Street drove them crazy in 106, so there was a cleanup during that period?
A sea of photos, videos in my possession and documentation of hotline calls
What's new?
It's been like this for years.
The same goes for competitions involving motorcycles and cars from the north with pressurized exhausts.
They did nothing and will do nothing.
The only solution is to move to another city where the city is nurtured and maintained.
I suggest to all those people to move to north Tel Aviv where everything is as it should be.