The Marker, Yael Drel, 20.04.2020

Dramatic growth in the number of housing units planned in recent years has been halted by the squeeze of the Corona crisis - and the shortage of new housing units in the housing market is expected to deepen. The data revealed by the Treasury's Planning Administration indicate that the promotion of the strategic housing plan for 2040 has been halted. This means that the Committee for the Advancement of Preferred Housing Complexes, which was supposed to approve 80,000 housing units on an accelerated route, will approve only 40,000 housing units by the end of the year.

This figure, along with other bleak data on the situation in the planning institutions, was revealed this morning in the letter of the Planning Director General, Dalit Silver, to the Director General of the Ministry of Finance, Shai Babad, and Civil Service Commissioner Daniel Hershkowitz.

In her letter, Silber notes that as of March 22, the Planning Administration is working on a limited program of only 30% of the organization's human resources, and the significance of this is an inability to meet the goals set in the strategic plan, whereby by 2040 1.5 million new housing units should be built in Israel, out of 2.6 million planned housing units .

Among the significant plans that have been adversely affected, Silber notes the Eshkol complex in Sde Dov in northern Tel Aviv (4,844 housing units); Lod-North (5,600 housing units); Herzliya Northern Complex (10,000 housing units); Tamra-South (5,269 housing units); And Umm al-Fahm-Arq al-Shabaab (5,000 housing units) - along with various regeneration programs, including a municipal renewal program in the Shabar suburb in Bat Yam (1,120 housing units) and in Olga Hill (1,148 housing units).

The planning inventory of the Israeli housing market is also expected to be damaged in part due to the drastic decline in the output of construction sites, which currently find it difficult to work in full format, as well as due to delay in granting building permits and stopping tendering for marketing of thousands of housing units.

"The advancement of these issues and many others, has recently been hit by the outbreak of the Corona crisis . In these circumstances, we will not be able to meet the key challenges facing us as a body of growth in the Israeli economy, and will impair the Planning Administration's compliance with its approved work plan for 2020," Silber explains.

Compared to the corresponding period last year, there is a sharp drop in the data according to the Planning Administration: If in 2019 from 15 March to 15 April, there were 666 District Planning and WMD discussions on 650 programs, while this year 284 discussions were held on 270 plans.

Furthermore, in 2019, from March 15 to April 15, 229 plans were approved in the district planning and WMD programs involving 10,500 housing units, while 74 were approved this year and plans include only 1,800 housing units.