Housing accommodations have been provided for some 4,500 immigrants absorbed in Israeli collective agricultural settlements through a special revolving fund for building loans, it was announced today by Julius Simon, president of the Palestine Economic Corporation, co-sponsor of the fund with the Jewish Agency.
Mr. Simon issued the report, compiled as of June 30, in advance of his departure Friday for Israel to confer with officials there on the corporation’s expansion program, including an $800,000 appropriation covering housing and several industrial projects.
The revolving fund, now totalling $450,000, was established in 1935 to help collective settlements build apartments for the immigrants they accepted for work on their farms. By the end of last month, according to Mr. Simon’s report, 133 collective settlements in all parts of Israel had obtained housing loans, the amounts depending on the number of immigrants absorbed by each group. The fund is administered by the Central Bank for Cooperative Institutions in Palestine, Ltd., a subsidiary of the P.E.C.
The projected $800,000 housing and industrial program, Mr. Simon said, will be undertaken on land owned by the Palestine Housing Corporation in the Haifa Bay region. It is part of an area totalling about 1,300 acres that the Bayside Land Corporation, a P.E.C. subsidiary, has been developing there for 20 years in accordance with a master plan. It erects apartment houses, develops residential and industrial communities and constructs factory buildings in which space is rented for small businesses.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
