One of the biggest unknowns in the urban real estate market in Haifa is how many ghost apartments there really are in the city of Haifa. In order to get an answer to this question, we must first agree on what a ghost apartment is. According to the definitions of the Central Bureau of Statistics, these are apartments that stand empty (even if for a small part of the year (They are inhabited, they are still considered empty.) Some sources believe that only if the apartment is unfit for living can it be considered a "ghost apartment". But the really intriguing question is how many ghost apartments there are in Haifa.
The State Audit Committee held a discussion on the issue of ghost apartments
A few weeks ago, a discussion was held in the Knesset in the State Audit Committee on the issue of dealing with ghost apartments. A ghost apartment is any apartment that is not in use. This definition is broader than - "apartments whose condition does not allow living", according to the committee. The committee also presented a survey by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) according to which there are approximately 158,000 unoccupied apartments in Israel. According to CBS data, most of the empty apartments are in the three largest cities: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. It should be noted that the Haifa municipality rejects the data and claims that in Haifa there are only a few hundred unoccupied apartments. At the end of the discussion, which was held in the State Audit Committee, the chairman of the committee, Sheli Yachimovich, decided to ask the State Auditor for a special report on the subject, in order to try and shed more light on the problem and its causes.
Only 10% of the empty apartments are also sealed:
The difference between the CBS data and the municipality's data is also due to the definition of a ghost apartment. The CBS holds that an apartment that is lived in for a small part of the year should also be defined as an empty apartment. That is, if the apartment is not permanently occupied, it is a ghost apartment. It is very difficult to determine which part of the year one lives in a habitable apartment. According to the CBS data, only about 10% of the empty apartments are sealed, abandoned or destroyed apartments, which almost anyone can see that they cannot be used for living. Determining a normal apartment that is lived in for a small part of the year is more complex and requires careful inspection.
The attempt to encourage occupancy by doubling property taxes:
Several years ago, an attempt was made to reduce the number of ghost apartments in the country, when the local authorities received permission to collect double property taxes from owners of properties that stand empty in order to sell or rent the empty apartments. In order to determine in which apartments in Haifa a double property tax should be collected, data from an electricity company was used, based on the assumption that electricity consumption should be zero in a residential apartment, compared to an apartment that is actually used for living. The double collection was for a short period and in practice there are still many apartments that are not used for living. A representative of the electricity company also came to the committee, who said that according to data from the electricity company, there are about 1,700 empty apartments in Haifa.
A call to occupy a ghost apartment before destroying green lungs:
A claim that is often heard is that if it were possible to inhabit the ghost apartments in the city, there might be less need for new neighborhoods, which are built on green areas, such as Ramat Goral, Morot Lincoln, Tel Aharon, Givat Zemar, Navot Peres and more... even if there are landowners In the new neighborhoods, which want their land to become private, the rights can be transferred to existing neighborhoods and not damage the last green areas in Haifa. The Haifa city engineer, Ariel Waterman, repeatedly states that in the next 20 years a large number of new neighborhoods will be built in Haifa, which will allow another 200,000 residents to make Haifa their home. The question is whether there really is any sense in building housing units in huge quantities in a city where the situation of the residents has hardly changed in the last decade. In addition, there are estimates that the number of ghost apartments in the city is higher than the municipality's estimates, and if we use these apartments we will put hundreds or maybe even thousands of new apartments on the market and then we will increase the construction of the new neighborhoods even more.
The entrepreneurs press:
Another difficulty is the involvement of the developers and contractors, who push for the construction of additional housing units in the city, and if there are objections from council members or other parties, they apparently apply pressure and claim that those council members are hindering the development of the city. Compared to those with an economic interest in construction who push for the establishment of new neighborhoods, where today You can find wadis and groves, it seems that no one will bring the opposite argument, that there are enough existing and unoccupied apartments in Haifa and not so many people, who are looking for apartments in the city and can't find a place to live, so maybe you should think again about whether it is necessary to build so many neighborhoods at the same time at the expense of trees and open spaces.
The Haifa Municipality's response to Hai's appeal here:
The data proves that in Haifa there are several hundred empty apartments and nothing more. The expected construction in the city of Haifa is in line with the approved outline plan and with the expected increase in the number of residents of the city. A huge logistics park will be built in Haifa, which will serve the new port that is being built these days, and will be the third largest in the Mediterranean and together with the opening of the sea front,
They will create wide circles of a variety of sources of employment and livelihood for the residents of Haifa and the entire metropolis in the fields of economy, finance, tourism, high-tech and trade, and will be a source of tourism, culture and leisure activities, similar to many port cities in the world.
The city of Haifa is also developing in the field of residential housing, both in the direction of urban renewal, on the basis of existing construction, and in the areas designated for new construction, and the green lungs, as marked in the outline plan, will be kept as they are, without additional construction.
Ghost Apartments - a photography project in the Ibn Gvirol area of Haifa
(Photo: Yaron Karmi)
Shame and disgrace that the Haifa municipality invests so much effort in the pursuit of a few hundred thousand or in the best case millions of shekels a year, when the municipality's budget this year is about 4 billion! Hundreds of millions of shekels are wasted on all kinds of unnecessary internal events, signage budgets are inflated on huge messages along the lines of 'We've made you better' or 'Haifa celebrates with the pensioners' that come off after a week and go to waste, instead of really doing what is needed in the development of weak neighborhoods, the rehabilitation of Hadar and the market, Layering of roads that have not been touched for 30 years and so on.
In most cases, these are destroyed buildings, and even if we assume that a person has property and does not use it, that is his right, and he should not be punished for it.
50 meters below the city hall building around the Burj, the public environment has been filthy, ruined and neglected for decades, and for me that says everything about this municipality - the most expensive municipality in the country (except Y-M), which only burdens the residents year by year.