Lawmakers hear of increasing challenges of evacuees living in hotels since Oct. 7

Lawmakers are hearing about the increasing difficulties surrounding the housing of tens of thousands of evacuees in hotels for some four months since the start of the war.

“They let a husband and wife into the same complex even though the husband had a restraining order,” Shai Kahan, the deputy head of the government’s program for evacuees, tells the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality.

“Youths are sitting in the hotel in Eilat or in Haifa and it creates a bad feeling,” he says in response to a question from National Unity MK Pnina Tamano-Shata about women feeling harassed by groups of men in hotel lobbies.

“Struggles between the hotel management and the evacuees at the hotel who feel — and it’s important not to underestimate the difficulties — feel like they are at home, and are violating the hotel’s rules,” he says.

“There are children who are waking up in the morning and simply not going to school,” he says.