Neighborhood Watch: Scaling up

Once a transit camp, Or Akiva is now holding its own with other middle-class Haifa-area towns.

By JOHN BENZAQUEN
Or Akiva 421 (photo credit: Courtesy of Or Akiva municipality)
Or Akiva 421
(photo credit: Courtesy of Or Akiva municipality)
Or Akiva is a small town south of Haifa and east of the ancient city of Caesarea. It started life in the early ’50s as a ma’abara, or a transit camp for the new immigrants who were flooding the country, and most of its inhabitants were immigrants from North Africa.
Like many such transit camps, it was supposed to be transitory. The Construction and Housing Ministry decided that the best way to solve the housing problem on a more permanent basis was to convert the transit camps into permanent urban entities. As such, it started building low-cost housing, ranging from semidetached dwellings to single-family homes to apartment blocks. The dwellings were between 40 square meters and 60 sq.m., and those who opted for single-family or semidetached dwellings got relatively large plots of land measuring 800 sq.m. and 900 sq.m.
At the time, land was not scarce as it is now. These dwellings are now much in demand because of their spacious grounds. Today, most semidetached homes make do with plots of 250 sq.m. to 350 sq.m.
Today’s Or Akiva is completely different from the Or Akiva of the ’50s and ’60s, largely because of the improved infrastructure and the city’s physical appearance.
At its inception, Or Akiva was home to immigrants who had arrived in this country with barely the clothes on their backs. Most were uneducated by European standards and consequently worked in low-paying menial jobs in the Haifa and Hadera areas. Today, the second and third generation have had more opportunities and therefore better-paying jobs, and the population’s improved economic status has led to a dramatic change in the town’s physical well-being, in its administration and in the way residents perceive their own city.
The town, which is about 30 km. south of Haifa and 74 km. north of Tel Aviv, has begun attracting middle-class residents. One reason for this is that during the past 15 years, it has shed many of its negative aspects, especially in the eyes of neighboring towns like Binyamina, Zichron Ya’acov and Hadera. Another reason is that since the ’90s, the quality of the homes constructed in Or Akiva has improved markedly.
THERE WERE two waves of building activity in Or Akiva.
In the ’50s and early ’60s, the Construction and Housing Ministry built low-cost dwellings for the new immigrants from oriental countries. These were difficult times, and the most pressing concern was numbers and not quality. The ministry built numerous houses and apartments to accommodate the more than one million immigrants who arrived at that time, tripling the population from the barely 650,000 living in Israel when the state was established.
From the early ’60s to the ’90s, there was no building activity. It resumed with the million or so immigrants who came from the former Soviet Union.
Times had changed, and the housing constructed for these immigrants was of a far higher quality than that which had been built for the immigrants of the ’50s. The Russian influx started a trend that gradually upgraded the city and improved its image.
Today Or Akiva is a town of nearly 20,000, and it is expected to reach 40,000 by 2020.
In the past, the contrast between the upscale Caesarea and the not-so-upscale Or Akiva was sharply pronounced; today, it is less so. Many Caesarea residents shop in the Or Akiva mall, and residents of Or Akiva belong to the Caesarea Golf Club and work in the Caesarea Industrial Park, one of the most modern in the country.
OR AKIVA Mayor Simha Yosipov tells Metro that “we have much to offer young married couples and middle class new immigrants. We are in a very central location with easy road and rail access to all parts of Israel. We are near important industrial and employment centers, the new housing projects are of a high quality, and we have a very good educational system. Our residents have good employment opportunities, housing at low prices, education for their offspring and a well-developed commercial infrastructure.”
The real-estate market in the city has been showing signs of growth for the past six months or so. Yehiel Oded, Re/Max agent in Or Akiva, says demand for real estate there is strong.
“Up to the end of 2011, demand for real estate in Israel as a whole was weak, but it was less marked here. Currently we are seeing a mini surge in demand.
Real estate in Or Akiva is still inexpensive compared to the surrounding towns. The cost of real estate in Zichron Ya’acov is over 40 percent higher than that in Or Akiva, while the price of semidetached homes and single-family homes in Binyamina is approximately 50% higher than in Or Akiva.
Consequently Or Akiva is very cost-effective for young couples from these two towns.”
From a real-estate perspective, Or Akiva can be divided into three parts: the areas built in the ’50s and early ’60s; the Orot area, built in the ’90s; and the new developments in Hayovel neighborhood, which has a mixture of single-family and semidetached homes and apartments.
The least expensive part of town is the part built in the ’50s and ’60s – the center of town and the Kennedy neighborhood.
A three-room apartment of up to 70 sq.m. costs between NIS 360,000 and NIS 400,000, while a single-family home with a large plot of land from 800 sq.m. to 900 sq.m. costs around NIS 1 million. There is extensive investor demand for these inexpensive three-room apartments.
In the Orot neighborhood, an average three-room apartment costs NIS 650,000, while an average four-room apartment can cost over NIS 700,000 and a semidetached home can cost NIS 1.2m. In the new Hayovel area, an average four-room apartment costs NIS 900,000, an average five-room apartment NIS 1.1m., and a single-family home on a plot of 500 sq.m. with a 220- sq.m. built-up area costs NIS 2m.