Plans Offered to Relieve Housing Lag

The Knesset Interior and Finance committees heard proposals yesterday and today to relieve Israel’s severe housing shortage and a complaint by Housing Minister Zeev Sharef that government offices were circumventing a government curb on the construction of public buildings, thereby contributing to the dearth of private dwellings.

Sharef told the Finance Committee today that there were a record 51,000 building starts in Israel in 1971 compared to half as many in 1968. Avraham Ofer, managing director of Shikun Ovdim, the Histadrut housing company, told the Interior Committee yesterday that an average of 50,000 flats would have to be built each year for the next 10 years and urged that land be made available for the half million new units.

Sharef said two factors pushed up the price of housing–inflation and the purchase of apartments by foreign residents. He said that since the government put a ban on public building construction as an anti-inflation measure, government offices have been moved into private dwellings, a phenomenon that has doubled in the past year. According to Sharef, construction standards will be lowered in 1972 and more small flats will be built to cut costs and provide young couples with inexpensive homes.

Appearing yesterday before the Finance Committee, Prof, Haim Barkai of Hebrew University opposed suggestions that government land be sold at cheap prices to contractors. He proposed its sale at regular market prices and direct government subsidies to tenants in special categories such as new immigrants, slum dwellers, young couples and large families. Aharon Becker, a Labor MK, described the housing shortage as the country’s biggest economic failure and opposed the sale of government land to the highest bidder. He said that would only benefit the affluent.