Gili Melnicki, themarker.com

The Local Planning and Building Committee is expected to discuss sweeping policy for urban renewal plans in the coming weeks. If the policy is approved, the municipality is expected to limit the additional building rights provided to existing apartments in urban renewal projects.

According to the proposal unveiled yesterday at The Marker, existing apartments of between 40 and 80 square meters will only receive an additional 12 square meters as part of urban renewal plans - a standard additional space per room, and nothing more. A balcony addition will not be included in the area and will be allowed in addition to 12 square meters.

This is a sweeping decision that will limit the transformations provided, provide certainty in planning, and unite projects across the city. For a small apartment of 40 square meters, the local committee will be allowed to exercise discretion for special reasons and, in addition, for existing apartments whose area exceeds 80 square meters, no consideration space will be added at all.

"Will make order in the market"

The document has not yet been approved, but contractors operating in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa field are already turbulent around the emerging policy line . On the one hand, they welcome the certainty in the industry that they can create the new policy and the pushing of the "farmers" outside the housing market. On the other hand, this is a reduction in construction rights, which will render some of the projects uneconomical and worthwhile for them, especially in southern and eastern parts of the city.

Tel Aviv 38 Project

Yehuda Reporter, chairman of the Tel Aviv and Central District Contractors 'Association and vice president of the Israel Builders' Association, said that "the contractors welcome the granting of certainty in the design and the decision to include the new conditions for the area additions only on future plans without prejudice to the previous plans." , The local committee still needs to maintain a degree of flexibility and discretion. We have been involved in the process that the municipality has been promoting for the past two years, and in places that can predict that there will be a problem of economic viability - the municipality must maintain the flexibility to produce permutations greater than 12 square meters. It is very difficult to determine each project and project in advance and the municipality must examine each case on its own. A sweeping decision is wrong. "

Reporter added that "Another positive aspect of the move is the exclusion of detainees from the urban renewal market. By creating permanent permutations - we hope that the detainees and dream dispensers will disperse the delusional promises that link them to reality or transient. And it will make order in the market. "

Injury to south and east Tel Aviv

Attorney Yishai Itzkowitz, head of the real estate transactions department at Attorney Agmon & Co., also backs the contractors' position and opposes a sweeping decision on the subject: "80-room apartment in northern Tel Aviv is not an apartment in the Hatikva neighborhood. The issues that are currently being ignored are also being expressed: We often encounter illegal construction or enclosed balconies, and in such cases, the owners of apartments that have illegally expanded the apartment space are preparing the extension. Provider and the rigor of the new policy can make it difficult to recruit homeowners and thus reduce the number of projects. "

Oppose the maintenance fund

Yehuda Correspondent, Chairman of the Tel Aviv District Contractors Organization and Center

Yehuda criticized the municipality's intention to charge developers working on urban renewal projects, to set up a capital maintenance fund - intended for tenants who lived in the building in the past and had to bear the high maintenance costs that were not previously done. The capital maintenance funds are now voluntary and not obligated by the Municipal Renewal Authority but are intended to serve two important purposes: one - ensuring that the older population is not evacuated from the new homes due to codes to bear the maintenance costs. Second - the fund is intended to save the building's occupants, who will be required years later to bear future costs of malfunctions and renewal of air systems, elevators, etc., which are much higher than those currently available in the lower buildings.

"Crazy cost extra"

"This is an insane cost to the project that the developer wants to bear. This addition will be rolled out to calculate the project and raise housing prices in it," he wrote. "And all this without talking about the procedural problems raised by the fund: Who will manage the trust fund? Who will take responsibility for the flow management and make sure the returning tenants are indeed the residents of the apartment? Will the money be invested in something? There are a number of issues and the choice of the municipality the hard way."

He wrote that the contractors offered the municipality a simpler mechanism: returning tenants who were eligible before moving to the new apartments to relieve property taxes for reasons of economic hardship and low socioeconomic status - would be entitled to receive the same monthly maintenance allowance, which the developer would compensate.

Adv. Zvi again

Adv. Zvi again an expert on planning and building and urban renewal, for his part, believes that "policy is a positive thing because it is orderly, and right now there is no order in the urban renewal industry. On the other hand, a policy document is only a policy and ultimately planning must be examined according to the environment and location."

Again, he emphasizes that "these restrictions may also hamper eviction projects and not extract them from the mud, because if you cut back on tenants in exchange, even if they are new apartments, some tenants may not even want to go into this adventure. It is unclear how this policy will apply. Retroactive about commitments in assets that have been signed before. "