The Marker, Yael Drel, 14.05.2020

Interior Minister Aryeh Deri is expected to be the strong man in the housing market, while the new Minister of Construction and Housing, Yaakov Litzman, will rule the Israel Lands Authority, but his powers in managing significant moves in the market are expected to be relatively small.

The coalition agreement signed between the Likud faction and the Shas faction indicates that Deri will take over the planning administration as requested and that under the Ministry of the Interior, a planning headquarters will be set up that will operate in a similar manner to the housing headquarters that has been operating in the Ministry of Finance in recent years, with the aim of coordinating planning operations on behalf of the Interior Minister. He must also appoint on his behalf the key officials of the planning system.

The text of the agreement reads as follows: "The head of planning will also serve as the head of the National Planning and Building Council, and the planning head will consist of at least the same number and level of facilities, and the housing headquarters and these standards will be fully budgeted as supplementary standards by the Treasury Department."

The new headquarters will replace the housing headquarters that have been operating in the Ministry of Finance in recent years under outgoing Minister Moshe Kahlon. The limited headquarters, first headed by Avigdor Yitzhaki and then under Ze'ev Bielski, was supposed to include the required headquarters work in the housing sector, including promoting moves and discourse with local authorities on strategic moves that the government has led in recent years - such as the roof agreements.

However, control is now expected to pass fully into the hands of Minister Deri and to the Ministry of the Interior, which is in charge of continuous contact with the local government. It is now hoped that the political and local interests of the local authorities, who fear taking new residents into their territory and often delaying new construction, will not overcome the strategic needs of the housing market.

The housing market has suffered many delays in recent months in land marketing, new apartment planning, and construction starts and the planning system has warned that the strategic plan's goals have been compromised, under which the State of Israel is expected to build 1.5 million new homes by 2040.

Another section that guarantees that control of the housing market is exercised is central to the functions of the national and provincial committees. The agreement states that besides chairing the National Planning and Building Committee, the chair of the National Infrastructure Committee, chair of the Committee for the Advancement of Preferred Housing Complexes (the super committee responsible for the rapid promotion of the Giant Residential Programs), will also be the chair of the provincial committees. Interior Ministry employees will be appointed by the Minister of the Interior, who is not among the employees of the Planning Administration.

The agreement refers to the fact that the Planning Administration, the unit responsible for all planning in Israel, including housing, infrastructure and employment, will be fully under the control of the Interior Ministry, with the exception of the National Unit for Enforcement of Planning and Building Law - whose powers will be left by the Ministry of Finance.

As far as the Commission's continued promotion of preferred housing complexes is concerned, despite the severe criticism it received, the state is expected to extend its mandate. However, the wording of the section indicates the criticism directed by the local authorities towards the accelerated planning that the state has led in recent years, under which local authorities have warned that they will not add many residents to the area, due to the dwindling municipal property tax rates.

"The WMD's activities will be extended as the main planning tool through which to produce the required housing volumes in the strategic plan 2040." .

At the end of 2019, the WMD concluded five years of activity, during which 66 plans were approved that add approximately 226.5 thousand apartments to the planning inventory across the country. "In effect during the five years of the commission's activity, the land marketing process began in only about 25 of them, and tenders were issued for 30,000 housing units. These constitute only 13% of the total planned dwellings.