Below is a google translated letter I received recently
What is the thing that disturbs the rest of the ultra-orthodox public, and makes his life more difficult than anything else?
He has nowhere to live.
A simple, basic thing like a roof has become unattainable.
The general public still has these options. Our public simply does not have it.
An apartment in the farthest periphery currently costs NIS 800,000, as of the time of writing. Public opinion is skyrocketing.
The burden is heavy on the shoulders of parents who are failing. Look left and right, follow those who started marrying girls - and you will see. People lose the joy of life, become a shadow of themselves, busy and preoccupied all day long with the wheel of fortune, dodging creditors, chasing Arabs.
The distress is not only of the parents, but also of the couples themselves. People live in underground warehouses called "housing units" for some reason, with three and four pitzkaleach, without any outlook on the future.
The ultra-orthodox public is a huge public of about a million people, which is growing all the time. The broadest cross-section of this public belongs to the Lithuanian sector (even if the Knesset does not express this, the things are known and painful and so on). This sector is the most diligent in Torah on the one hand, and the poorest on the other hand.
Is there any housing program on the horizon?
Does anyone have an idea where to house the thousands of couples currently stuck in warehouses and parking lots and attics in all the ultra-orthodox cities? And does anyone have an idea where to house the tens of thousands of couples on the way, those who are now en masse populating Wolfson and Farah, Wolf and the old seminary, Hebron and Ponivage, the Elisheva and Feuerstein girls?
What do you think someone would do here? Should they build more shriveled units on top of the towers in the ultra-orthodox cities?
The electoral power of the ultra-orthodox sector, in the Knesset - equals between seven and eight mandates. With seven mandates, you can do a lot: you can demand the housing portfolio, you can set up committees and chair them, you can make the marketing of tens of thousands of apartments to the ultra-Orthodox public a threshold condition for entering the coalition.
But this is not happening, because our people are not in the positions of power relevant to this issue, which is in our very soul. From reading the Yatad Na'am newspaper on Tuesday, it can be concluded that the representatives are busy with burning issues such as the conscription decree and the conversion decree. But the time has come to understand that the housing decree is no less serious, and threatens the continued establishment of the Torah world. It hurts the bridegrooms who marry children, and it hurts the peace of mind of young couples. This is a decree on the Torah world in the full sense of the word.
We have reached a mental health check.
What was is not what will be.
We heard with our ears in a tearful and tearful conversation from one of the great leaders of the Yeshivas of Israel, that the treatment of this issue is as urgent and important as, and even much, much more than the treatment of the kashrut reform of the giving of this or that priest. The world of the Torah. The headlines in the party newspaper should deal with the issue of housing, which keeps sleepless nights away from the eyes of the wealthy, and not with struggles and skirmishes with this or that member of the Knesset.
The Council's decision reads: "The Council of Torah Elders strengthens the hands of the representatives of the Torah flag in the Knesset and the local authorities to continue to do as much as they can to find a solution to the housing crisis in the ultra-Orthodox public, so that the young couples can purchase a roof over their heads without sorrow and anguish."
The issue of housing is a complex and complicated issue, which even many good people who tried to deal with it did not succeed. We are not satisfied with random and occasional treatment of this or that public representative. Even a flattering headline in the newspaper about negotiations to release agricultural land for construction will not solve the problem. The Elders of Israel were instructed to establish a professional committee in their delegation that would be composed of people who are experts in the field of housing and would concentrate exclusively on this issue, and the members of the Knesset would act according to the committee's instructions.
On the mission of the elders of Israel, we went out to the public, to shout and cheer about the terrible plight, and to sign the masses of members of the ultra-Orthodox sector on a petition calling on the representatives of our public to act in a real way, to make a change, here and now.
So housing is an economic problem, so solutions (in the realm of hishtadlus) have to be addressed in economic, political and geographic terms.
ReplyDeleteIsrael is a booming modern western economy, and real estate prices keep rising. This affects not only hareidim, but israelis, and Olim who have difficulty in finding and purchasing houwing in big cities.
Jerusalem has little space left - so the solutions are not going to be easy.
There are new build areas whcih are adjacent to arab vilalges, and over the green line. These are cheaper, but also potentially riskier.
There are shtachim, where RZ have communities , especially maaleh Adumin and the E1 corridor which is gradually developing.
there are other towns in the North or south which are cheaper than the Capital.
the other way of thinking is to ask, who in the Knesset are closes to Hareidim, in terms of Orach haim? it is clearly the RZ parties, who have the most similar lifestyle to hareidim, essentially the only other people who have yeshivas , and expereicne of building new settlements. These are the people who know about building new homes, and new towns, so collaboration with them will benefit hareidim. There can even be mixed neighborhoods.