Hope is Pinned on Local, Foreign Experts to Find Housing Solution

Israel is pinning its hopes on local and foreign experts to come up with a solution to the country’s severe housing shortage which stems from slow construction, soaring costs and a shortage of skilled labor in certain stages of the building process. According to Joseph Sharon, director general of the Housing Ministry, and Moshe Rivlin, secretary general of the Jewish Agency, the experts who will meet here this week are expected to develop blueprints from which Israel can begin to tackle the problem.

Sharon and Rivlin, at a joint press conference today, said the Housing Ministry’s technological advisory committee, and Jack D. Weller, the Jewish Agency’s housing committee chairman and member of the Agency’s Board of Governors, will hold a series of meetings and will tour building sites and building factories during the week. They will sum up their findings by next Friday. The meetings will be closed to the press and public. The discussions will be chaired by Joseph Newman, vice-president of the Tishman Corp. for building and research, the largest firm of its kind in the US.

Sharon and Rivlin noted that new building starts in Israel rose from 24,300 units in 1968 to 51,000 in 1971. The number of workers employed in the building trades increased during the same period from 76,000 to 107,000, the maximum available. But building is being held up by a lack of skilled labor for finishing jobs which pre-fabrication cannot solve, according to Sharon and Rivlin. The officials said no possibilities are ruled out, including the temporary import of labor from abroad.

7 PERCENT LIVE IN OVERCROWDED CONDITIONS

Sharon said the immediate aim is to reduce the time from planning to completion of a unit from the present 18 months to 12 months. He said that there would be no initial reduction in costs except the saving of interest on the capital outlay due to the shorter completion time. But eventually, he said, prices may fall.

In a related report, the Central Bureau of Statistics disclosed today that seven percent of Israel’s Jewish families live in crowded housing conditions defined as three or more persons per room. Among families whose breadwinner is of Asian or African origin, 15 percent live in overcrowded conditions compared to 7 percent for families headed by an Israel-born breadwinner.

Among European and American families, only 1.4 percent live in crowded conditions. The bureau reported that the total number of families living in overcrowded conditions dropped by only one percent in 1971 compared to the previous year.