Globes, Arik Mirowski 05.10.2021
What has been happening lately that buildings in Israel are collapsing one after the other? Did a mysterious corona plague strike them? No. Is the state responsible for the matter? Yes, but not only. And the unpleasant forecast: if the current situation continues - the collapses will also continue, and perhaps even at an accelerated pace.
What most of the recent cases have in common is that they are old buildings, in which a series of failures have been discovered, the main ones being a lack of preventive maintenance, and careless work on NOP 38. The problem is that there are many other buildings in poor condition.
The State of Israel is in its 70s, when a considerable part of the buildings erected in its first three decades were housing estates, which were built quickly and were intended for the absorption of the great aliyah. This means that there are hundreds of thousands of old housing units, whose expiration time has passed. Yes, even home writers count age. The problem is that awareness of this among the public is nil, and doing so by the government is irrelevant in most cases.
The general public almost denies the basic fact that those who are responsible for the integrity of the building are first and foremost its occupants. Just as a car owner is responsible for the correctness of his car. Unlike a vehicle, which is required to undergo an annual licensing inspection ("test") for older buildings, no "test" has been scheduled, and unless something extreme happens, the tenants do nothing for preventive maintenance and renovations. The dangerous premise that tenants run their lives is that their home will last forever. This is a big mistake and the tenants are directly responsible for what will happen to their building in the future.
However, this is only half the truth. In many of these buildings it is difficult to raise money for a house committee, and for weekly cleaning, and even if there is an awareness of the importance of engineering inspection and preventive maintenance - no funding will be found for this.
Strengthening versus renewal
This is exactly where the country was supposed to enter. The Association for Housing Culture, which, among other things, assists with the ongoing maintenance of buildings, occasionally assists in engineering consulting. However, when it comes to the actual works - it is difficult to "build" on it, and certainly not to receive grants from it. In any case, a large part of the buildings in question are also not members of the association. So today the association does not provide the required answer.
The government vision today creates a connection between the need to strengthen buildings or build new buildings under them, and the need to add housing units. Want to strengthen the building and add apartments to it? We are with you. Just want to strengthen the structure? - You're not interesting. This connection between building strengthening and urban renewal can be understood, but it is extremely problematic.
The response of NOP 38, which is intended to strengthen buildings against earthquakes and in general, can be appropriate for a considerable part of these structures. However, the limitations of NOP 38 are well known, especially in the peripheral areas. Local authorities are in no hurry to approve such projects, and in some cases it is not possible to add housing units to the existing structure (when the plot on which it is built is small, for example).
On the other hand, an evacuation-construction project, the promotion of which can last for more than a decade, cannot be of much use, because the buildings suspected of being dilapidated need immediate diagnosis and treatment. The answer given by Housing Minister Zeev Elkin to the problem - a proposal to lower the percentage of consent among the tenants, in order to accelerate the construction of evacuation-construction projects, is not relevant to the urgent needs of the owners of those buildings.
The lack of clarity around NOP 38 and the possibility that it will change in about a month to the outline created by Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, does not help at all.
If one wants to stop this difficult phenomenon - one must sever the perceptual connection between strengthening and renewal. True, this is contrary to the government agenda of adding housing units and urban renewal, which apparently sees the maintenance of an old structure as a waste of money. In the current situation, however, this is almost inevitable.
Hence, there is no other option. Without the assistance of government funding for inspections and preventive maintenance, which will be accompanied by aggressive publicity - the collapses, and the evacuation of cracked buildings will continue.