Pegging the differences

Local protesters joined the ‘tent city’ movement last week, the Knesset quickly becoming the focal point of daily protests.

By SHIRA POLIAK
Tent protestors claim haredim are given more benefits. (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Tent protestors claim haredim are given more benefits.
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Atent can be taken down in a few minutes by simply removing its supporting pegs and poles, folding the tent and neatly wrapping its cover. The Jerusalem tent protest movement campaigning against soaring rent prices and the high cost of living in Israel has benefited from this mobility, as the group has assumed a vocal – but traveling – presence in the capital.
At press time about 40 colorful tents were erected in a small park on King George Avenue near the junction with Rehov Ben-Yehuda in central Jerusalem, where they had been pitched since Monday. Mostly middle-class, working young adults and students are calling the tents their new temporary homes, and they commute to work from the shady spot each day, leaving the site empty except for a few protest organizers and some unemployed people who have joined the movement.
Before moving to the city center, about 15 were pitched outside the Knesset on Sunday night, where a mass demonstration was held. The group camped in Kikar Tzahal, opposite the Old City walls, for five nights before marching to the Knesset with more than 1,000 supporters, and spent one night sleeping in Kikar Zion the week before.
Composed of university students and young middle- class couples and families struggling to pay their monthly bills, and supported by Jerusalem NGOs and some city council members, the capital protesters are mobilizing to demand solutions from the government and express dissatisfaction with current socioeconomic policies and conditions.
Protests against rising rental prices and the high cost of living in Israel have been waged throughout the country as housing costs have risen by 40 percent since 2007, and hundreds of tents have been pitched from Kiryat Shmona to Beersheba since the first tent city was launched on Tel Aviv’s swanky Rothschild Boulevard two weeks ago. But some say that the economic challenges middle-class Jerusalemites face are specific to and exacerbated in the capital.
Dubbed “ghost apartments,” an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 apartments in the city owned by foreigners are vacant most of the year and are used for only a few weeks during the holidays, activists say. The number of unoccupied apartments off the rental market makes it more difficult for students and young adults to find affordable places to live, students complain, and the sales of luxury apartments throughout the city have driven up real-estate prices throughout Jerusalem.
Rachel Azaria, Jerusalem councilwoman for the Yerushalmim party and active in the struggle against the exorbitant cost of living in Jerusalem, says that the prices of apartments in Jerusalem have more than doubled in the past 10 years. The 33-year-old mother of three bought her apartment during the intifada when prices dropped, but she says that most of her hard-working professional friends who did not buy housing at the time cannot afford to purchase apartments now and are struggling to pay their rent. In an interview with In Jerusalem, she called on overseas owners to start renting their apartments.
“I realize that when these people bought their apartments, they were told that it was a Zionistic thing to do. Once people start to realize how hard it is for Israelis, maybe they will be willing to rent,” she says.
Nadav, a 28-year-old student at the Hebrew University studying sociology and involved in coordinating logistics for the Jerusalem protests, rents an apartment in the city center. He and his three roommates each pay NIS 1,500 a month. Nadav works as a counselor for children to help with his costs. He says that although the influx of foreign buyers in the Jerusalem real-estate market “is great for economics, there are fewer apartments available for me and my friends.”
Moshe Babani, a Jerusalem realtor for the Anglo- Saxon realty group, which caters to many foreign buyers, admits that the number of empty foreignowned apartments is one factor contributing to the housing crisis in Jerusalem. But he says that the ghost-apartment phenomenon is also affecting real estate in Tel Aviv, Herzliya and Netanya, albeit to a lesser degree.
Most of his foreign clients are not interested in renting out their apartments, he says, although he recognizes that more available rental apartments could lower rents in the city significantly.
He adds that part of the problem in the Jerusalem market is the fact that without some degree of government intervention, contractors will continue to build luxury apartments that maximize profits and that there is little economic incentive for builders to create more affordable housing.
While rents in Jerusalem are relatively comparable to those in Tel Aviv, protesters say, some are also concerned that many people in Jerusalem are struggling to afford rentals because average salaries in Jerusalem are lower than in the Tel Aviv area, and there are fewer jobs in the private sector in the capital.
The average gross monthly salary for an employee in Jerusalem was NIS 7,300 in 2008, according to statistics compiled by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. The Jerusalem average was NIS 1,000 less than the national average salary in 2008; NIS 2,000 less than the average salary in Haifa; and NIS 3,000 less than the average salary in Tel Aviv in the same year, the JIIS found.
Although some of the conditions affecting rent prices in Jerusalem are specific to the city, the Jerusalem rent protesters are working closely with the Tel Aviv protesters and others throughout the country.
While the Tel Aviv component has been especially successful in protesting and arranging demonstrations, the Jerusalemites are working to lobby for specific solutions.
INBAR HALPERIN, 27, who has slept in the Jerusalem tents since they were erected more than two weeks ago and works for Ruah Hadasha (New Spirit), an activist organization dedicated to keeping young people in the city and sees affordable housing as one of its central struggles, says that the Jerusalem group is prepared to present concrete proposals because Jerusalem NGOs like New Spirit have focused on housing policies for the past few years.
The group is supportive of the 20-20-20 program advocated by Mayor Nir Barkat. This would require contractors who are building more than 20 apartments to sell 20 % of the units at 20% below market value.
Eran Nitzan, deputy director-general of the Association for Contractors and Builders in Israel, says that municipalities and contractors will have to negotiate on particular exemptions and policies designed for each city to create more affordable housing solutions without disrupting the market entirely.
He called the 20-20-20 plan “restrictive” and is hesitant about a policy that would apply to all buildings.
“I don’t know if the market will be able to contain this plan, but making a law that would make the whole market go down is not smart,” Nitzan says.
Other demands include changes in the laws that dictate how contractors bid on land so that instead of the highest bidder buying the plot, the contractor who will build the most affordable housing options would obtain permits, thus creating more affordable housing and reinstating the law that negated public housing.
Azaria says that the movement is focused on lobbying the Knesset because without including these provisions in new national housing laws, municipalities cannot implement or vote on the measures.
But she says that the proposals Prime Minister Binyanim Netanyahu unveiled on Tuesday are not sufficient to deal with the problem. Netanyahu announced that an additional 10,000 dormitories will be built, and while they “will take care of the students, it doesn’t take care of the middle class,” she says. Additionally, Netanyahu proposed that some land will be sold to builders at a 50% discounted price, but “no one is making sure that the lower prices the government gives the business people for land will affect the prices of apartments,” she says.
City councillor Merav Cohen, who represents the Hitorerut party, criticized the fact that the government did not announce the number of apartments builders will be able to build after purchasing the discounted land in a statement Tuesday.
The Jerusalem tent protest is also calling for a change in the way affordable housing units are apportioned. Currently, 70% of the affordable housing units are occupied by haredim, Halperin says, because people with seven or more children are immediately placed at the top of the list.
“In Jerusalem, the haredim get a lot of benefits. But the community that keeps Jerusalem going financially and socially – religious Zionists, secular, and young middle-class families and students – does not,” she says.
Halperin left her Nahlaot apartment and pitched her tent in Kikar Tzahal almost two weeks ago but admits that her new sleeping arrangements are not particularly comfortable. “It’s hard to sleep, it’s very noisy, and there is traffic here all night,” she says, sitting in the tent camp outside the Old City gates.
But in the evenings and at night, she says, the camp becomes lively as people play music, participate in discussion groups about the socioeconomic issues in the country and cook communal dinners.
Last Shabbat, the tent city hosted a festive Kabbalat Shabbat service with the Reform congregation Kol Haneshama, and many gathered together to have Shabbat dinner afterwards. Some families joined in, she says, and various stores donated food, hallot and wine.
The Jerusalem protest followed the initial Tel Aviv tent city.
Halperin adds that organizing the protest in Jerusalem has been challenging because there are fewer young people in the capital.
RONI KAUFMAN, a senior lecturer in the Department of Social Work at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev who has been monitoring housing issues in Israel for 30 years, says this is the first housing protest in Israel that did not start in Jerusalem. He calls Jerusalem “a very political city with a tradition of protest” but says that the smaller tent protest movement here suggests that “Jerusalem has changed” and has become “a less pluralistic city.”
But young people leading the protests in Jerusalem say that concern about the future makeup of Jerusalem is precisely why their movement is vital. They want to make sure that young people can afford to stay in the city, infuse life and energy into the culture, and sustain it.
“Young people and students are crucial to maintaining the pluralistic nature of Jerusalem, to make it a lively city with many faces,” says Inbar Ziv, a member of the Hebrew University student union. “It’s in the interest of the government and municipality to have a middle class in Jerusalem.”
Ziv, who is studying psychology at the Hebrew University, lives in Nahlaot with her boyfriend, and they pay NIS 3,500 a month for their 30-square-meter apartment.
Shahar Fisher, a member of the Hitorerut party involved in the protests, acknowledges that many young people could move to the outskirts of Jerusalem, such as Gilo and Pisgat Ze’ev, where rents are cheaper. But he says that the vitality of the city rests on the “creative class” of young, middle-class professionals. “The city needs young, creative people in the center, not on the outskirts,” he says. “I’m not only protesting about housing; life has become too hard to bear.”
By pitching tents and crafting housing demands, the protesters are prioritizing housing concerns, but many insist that the issue isn’t just about the difficulty of paying for places of residence.
“The protest isn’t only about high prices; the issue is that the middle class in Israel can’t survive. Food prices have gone way up, child care has risen, and salaries are very low. People can’t survive on their salaries,” says Azaria.
Many, like Kaufman and Fisher, are quick to blame government policies for the situation. Kaufman says that 45% of the Israeli poor are working people – “something we never had in Israel before.” He attributes the phenomenon to the “problem of income and privatization of the land market.”
Fisher agrees. He adds, “This whole struggle is part of something larger; it’s not just about the housing or food prices, it’s about the socioeconomic policies in Israel that are driving the middle class below the poverty line.”
Ziv and other students involved in the Jerusalem movement say that students and young people are appropriate vehicles to bring about this change.
“Students are studying very hard, served in the army and gave years of their lives to the country.
This is the time when they want to feel that the country is behind them, and it’s not,” she says.
“The political atmosphere in Israel rarely focuses on the social issues.
Security is such a major issue, and this protest puts the spotlight on social issues that touch all social and political aspects,” Ziv adds. “For too long, this country has not paid enough attention to these issues.”
These students and young adults sense that they are part of a large movement that is gaining momentum and are vowing not to back down.
“It’s the beginning of something new. I don’t know where it’s going, but I’m here and I’m staying,” says Nadav.