By Einat Podjarni*
19.03.09

The following guest post explains the actions of Halamish, a municipal company mandated with supplying housing aid for the weakest residents of Tel-Aviv-Jaffa.  Halamish and the story of M.’s,  a single  mother  six children, eviction was referred to in our first broadcast.

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On Monday, March 3rd, 2009, police forces arrived at M. family’s Jaffa apartment to evict them from the premises. A single-parent family, the M.’s consist of a mother and six children – the youngest two years old, the oldest seventeen. The family had entered the apartment in June of 2008 after waiting for many years for welfare housing it was eligible to through Halamish, the municipal housing also responsible for families eligible for welfare housing benefits. The waiting period drew longer and longer and the family struggled to make payments on the lease. It finally decided to invade an adjacent apartment, also owned by Halamish, which had stood vacant for about a year beforehand.

The intervention in the case by Tel-Aviv-Jaffa Municipal Councilman Omar Siksak and several activists of Jaffa Popular Committee led to a two-day stay of the family’s evacuation, until the Wednesday after. Heeding the Committee’s call, dozens of activists arrived on the premises on that day, spending the entire day with the family. Councilmen Siksak, Aharon Maduel and Yoav Goldring also arrived on site, and spoke to Halamish Director-General Gil Sa’ar. Despite all their efforts, however, Sa’ar refused to further postpone the family’s evacuation to a time when the family was awarded an alternative housing solution. Siksak went so far as to directly approach the Office of the Mayor of Tel-Aviv-Jaffa and demanding to speak personally with Mayor Ron Huldai, but his demands were unanswered. The activists’ presence on the premises was however instrumental in staying the family’s evacuation to later Wednesday evening, and this led to a feverish search for alternative housing.
The activists managed to locate an exorbitantly-priced apartment in Jaffa, the owners of which were the only ones who would sign a lease with the family on such short notice.

However, even while the lease was being signed, several evictors, accompanied by police officers and Special Patrol Unit officers, arrived at M. family’s apartment and began emptying out its contents. They refused to acquiesce to activists’ requests to wait at least until the inhabitants returned home to collect their belongings. The day ended with the lease signed, the keys of the new apartment exchanged and the family’s belongings’ transferred there. But even though the presence of activists on the premises meant that the family was spared the humiliation of being thrown out on the street, their housing difficulties are far from being resolved.

The situation that M. family found itself in is a test case – one of many – which reflects a deliberate policy of divestment by a municipal company accountable to the residents and their housing rights. At present, an economically and politically viable solution for the family’s difficulties is yet to be found, but at least they are not living on the street.

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Background – How This Happens

As mentioned above, the family had entered the apartment from which it was later evacuated in June of 2008 after a many-year-long wait for welfare housing it was entitled to through Halamish. The waiting period drew longer and longer and the family struggled to make payments on the lease. It finally decided to invade an adjacent apartment, also owned by Halamish, which had stood vacant for about a year beforehand.

The family lodged another application for housing benefits (which include rent aid in the context of an agreement with Halamish), and was accompanied this time by Attorney Rasha Assaf and the activists of the Jaffa Popular Committee. Their application was approved in February of 2009.

Halamish’s board debated the family’s application for rent aid on February 3rd and ruled to allocate it a monthly sum of NIS 1,200 in rent aid because of its size and income. Yehudit Ilani, a member of the Yaffa municipal council faction, in fact received oral confirmation in a phone call from Eli Shahar, who manages the company’s housing policies that it would grant the family said aid one month before it was to leave the apartment it had invaded in order to help it in its relocation efforts. It bears mentioning that an aid package to the tune of NIS1,200 does not begin to match rent rates in Jaffa. This means that a community effort will be needed just to find the family a suitable apartment at a reasonable price.

Halamish’s policy – its predilection of approving unsatisfactory rent aid as well as its discontinuation of the family’s current housing situation – must by no means be construed as accidental. The company is in fact actively pursuing a policy of abdicating its responsibility toward families eligible to welfare housing, in so doing spelling in effect their relocation to other towns. At the same time, Halamish portrays itself as having performed its duties.

The private case of the M. family was an urgent case that demanded immediate resolution. This case, however, reflects a growing problem that hundreds of Jaffa families have to deal with. According to data collected by Halamish itself, 200 more Jaffa families are living under the same conditions. Halamish claims that it has an insufficient number of housing units with which to house all of them – but has, instead of purchasing or building new ones in fact sold off existing units as part of its ongoing privatization efforts. Furthermore, the establishment continues its policy of selling off “absentee property”(1) to the tune of millions of shekels, and never invests them back in the local population, whose only wish is to lead a life of dignity in its place of birth.

The Popular Committee, through councilman Maduel, has recently lodged a request with Halamish for detailed accounts of its Tel-Aviv-Jaffa apartments, as well as the percentage of those occupied. This was done after Halamish raised numerous obstacles in the committee’s path to information. It is remains unanswered.

In one case which the Popular Committee oversaw, a family was evacuated from its home on the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa, with Halamish claiming the house was too big for the families’ need and that larger families were waiting in line for it. After it was evacuated, the apartment was put up for open auction and sold to private owners. As residents of this city, we demand that Halamish – a municipal company – act to benefit the public it is mandated to served, and not to make a fast buck while abdicating all responsibility.

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1. A group of ordinances incorporated into Israeli law in and around the 1948 war, the so-called Absentee Property Law classifies people who were citizens of the neighboring Arab states (considered ‘enemy states’) during the war, and who left their places of residence from within Israel/Palestine for whatever reason during it, as ‘absentees’. Under it, absentees’ properties were vested in the custodian of absentee property, who then sold them to development authorities empowered by the Knesset (the Israeli parliament). This legal framework has historically allowed the transferal of Palestinian property into Jewish hands – in Jaffa as in other places throughout the state.

* Einat Podjarni is a member of both the Jaffa Popular Committee and Ir Lekulanu (City for All) municipal council faction.