Lawmaker earning four times average wage wins subsidized housing

A Knesset member announced Monday that she had won the right to purchase a new apartment in a subsidized housing lottery championed that is a pet project of the head of her party.

Kulanu lawmaker MK Merav Ben Ari, whose gross monthly wage is over NIS 41,000 ($11,623) — four times the national average — described her excitement after learning that her application was selected in a draw for apartments in the “Galil Yam” project planned by real estate developer Africa-Israel Investments in the coastal city of Herzliya.

In a Facebook post, Ben Ari, 41, described her attachment to the city where she studied and worked as a student, rented an apartment for several years and set up the Derech Galim project, an initiative that offers sea sports training and activities to youth at risk.

“Finally, finally, it will happen, I will have my own home,” she wrote. “True, the house still hasn’t been built, and there are still committees, contracts and money (lots of money), but the very fact that I have hopes for my own home is a feeling I have never had before.”

Ben Ari, who has an infant daughter she is raising with the father, a gay friend, wrote that since May 2016 she has participated in 60 housing lotteries without success. Her Kulanu party, under  Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, had introduced the subsidized housing program in 2015.

She has been renting for nearly 20 years, she said.

The lawmaker recalled that while campaigning to become a Knesset member for the Kulanu party she focused on what she called “the new homeless,” referring to “those young people who worked hard all of their lives but didn’t manage to attain their basic right to housing, and now, behold, I can safely say that I joined the right party, a party that puts the housing crisis at the top of its agenda.”

Ben Ari entered the Knesset in 2015, when her party won 10 seats in parliament.

The Hebrew-language Yedioth Ahronoth daily reported Monday that Ben Ari found out about her good luck the previous day and went to look at the proposed site for the construction project in Herzliya. She was also invited by a representative of the Africa-Israel developers — apparently unaware of her position as a member of Knesset — to participate in a gathering of other winners to be held on Tuesday. Ben Ari reportedly said she can’t attend because of Knesset duties and will send a friend instead.

Yedioth estimated the cost of an 80-square-meter (861-square-foot) apartment in the Galil Yam project, which also includes a parking spot, a storage room and a balcony, at NIS 1,450,000 ($411,600), about 30 percent less than its market value.

Kahlon welcomed his party member’s good fortune, saying Ben Ari and her daughter “are joining the ranks of the other 30,000 households whose names already came up in the lottery and can buy an apartment for a fair price. The country’s land belongs to its young people; not to the Finance Ministry or the developers who build on it. I am truly moved by the stories of every family that fulfills the dream of buying a first home.”

At the beginning of the year, MKs’ wages were raised by 2.2%, amounting to a NIS 816 bump. In total. MKS earn NIS 41,342 ($11,730) a month before taxes. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the average monthly Israeli wage is NIS 10,264 ($2,912).

According to a CBS survey published in 2016, the average Israeli household earned a combined monthly NIS 18,671 ($4,855 at the time), and an after-tax income of NIS 15,427  ($4,011). The average monthly expenses were NIS 12,323 ($3,200).

The Finance Ministry’s affordable housing program, championed by Kahlon, allows developers to receive state land at cut-rate prices and to sell apartments at a discount to qualifying first-time buyers, who are selected by lottery.

The high cost of housing has become a hot-button issue in Israel, with young families complaining of being priced out of home ownership and even rentals in the economic center of the country.

In 2011, mass social protests broke out across Israel calling on the government to work to lower house prices and the cost of living.

In June 2015 Kahlon announced what he called the first phase in a plan for reducing Israel’s housing prices.

In addition to the expanded availability of discounted land for first-time home buyers, provisions included financial incentives to turn office space into residential homes, breaking up apartments into smaller units, and expanding the number of people who will be eligible for state land allocations.

Further ideas included implementation of government recommendations for developing minority towns, encouraging rural development and extending “added incentives to projects in the periphery,” a reference to development towns that have been economically marginalized and where poverty rates are relatively high.