Renovated Hebrew University dorms open for students

The NIS 13 million renovation for two student dormitories will provide housing for 200 students.

By MELANIE LIDMAN
Hebrew U Pres. Menachem Ben-Sasson at ribbon cutting 370 (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash 90)
Hebrew U Pres. Menachem Ben-Sasson at ribbon cutting 370
(photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash 90)
Almost a year after homeless activists broke into abandoned student dormitories in Kiryat Hayovel for a two week-long standoff with police and university officials, Hebrew University reopened the buildings for students on Tuesday.
The NIS 13 million renovation for two student dormitories will provide housing for 200 students, including those learning nursing at the Hadassah Ein Kerem Campus.
The dorms had stood empty on Stern Street for over a decade. Hebrew University president Menachem Ben-Sasson presided over the rededication ceremony for the two buildings with a total of 64 apartments.
After Jerusalem’s major tent encampments were dismantled last year at the end of the summer of social justice protests, homeless activists and families barricaded themselves inside one of the buildings. They were furious that they could find nowhere to live when there are so many abandoned buildings in Jerusalem. The group, which threatened to use violence if police tried to evict them, swelled to 120 people at its largest. Police evicted the group after two weeks when only 30 people were left inside, and arrested four of them.