Globes, Guy Nardi   05.04.2021

The Builders of the Land Contractors Association announced its support for the administrative petition filed by private landowners in the Sde Dov district, against the Tel Aviv District Committee's decision to allocate 2,400 housing units in favor of affordable apartments owned by the Tel Aviv Municipality. The public that every plan requires.

The petition of the private landowners came out against the decision to expropriate income-producing land from them, beyond the usual allocation of public land, without consideration. The association seeks to join the proceeding in the presence of the "friend of the court" (Amicus Curiae) or alternatively in the status of the respondent. That is, it expresses its absolute support for the petition even if it is not a party to the proceedings.

The total area large block includes 1,450 hectares, located between St. Props north of Namir Road East, Shai Agnon Street south and west sea. The land is divided among hundreds of owners, optional Israel Lands Administration ( Rm"i ), the Tel Aviv Municipality And others.

The master plan for the Sde Dov district, approved in July 2020, includes 16,000 housing units, of which 2,400 housing units will be allocated for affordable housing and 4,500 housing units for special use (student dormitories, sheltered housing, nursing homes, rental housing, etc.).

The plan also includes about 500,000 square meters for public buildings, about 125,000 square meters for commerce, about 330,000 square meters for employment areas, about 125,000 square meters for hotels and about 365 dunams of parkland. And public parks.

It should be understood that those 2,400 affordable housing units out of the 16,000 housing units included in the plan, are given to the municipality beyond the allocation it receives according to the balance sheets for its relative share in the plan, without being paid any consideration for them, neither paid out of land rights nor compensation .

"The definition of affordable housing is not unequivocal"

Haim Feiglin, vice president of the Builders of the Country Contractors Association, wants to make it clear that the association is in favor of affordable housing, but not at the expense of private landowners. He said, "The definition of affordable housing is not one-size-fits-all. "Suppose it is a small apartment for rent. It is a completely tradable product, for which there is no reason for expropriating rights from private landowners. We have no problem if they wanted to produce affordable housing on municipal or state land, but expropriating from private landlords is a dangerous precedent."

Adv. Shmuel was again the one who, together with Adv. Naama Schiff of Shuv & Co., drafted one of the landowners' petitions that was submitted to the court in October 2020. He said, A book, or to parks. What will the municipality do? It will issue a tender, receive payments and it will go into the coffers. Already today there are municipalities that take public land, market it to developers and build housing for rent. This tool is used here to get money. It will spread further. "

Another petition was filed by attorneys Mary Dunin again and live Weintraub, partner at Hamburger Evron & Co.. In their view, the vesting of the units outside of the table means that no less than breaking the rules. According to Mr. Weintraub, "These units all are valuable "Economically and there is no place for allocating them to the municipality, 'below' the allocation table, without their value (even reduced) being taken into account at all when allocating the rights to all landowners in the plan area, including the municipality."

Adv. Eyal Mamo, who represents the Builders of the Land Contractors Association in this case, believes that in the presence of provisions for the needs of the public, the municipality is doing business here. .

Adv. Ami Ben Yaakov, from the Ben-Yaakov law firm, who represents some of the landowners in the Gush Gadol, wants to add: Although Israel has initiated and promoted the issue of affordable housing - in practice the parameters for this are vague and undefined. The result is that each local committee decides on its own who, how much and where - leaving the developers and landowners to deal with the consequences. In practice, the entire project is delayed, just as it was in Holon, at 500, Rishon Lezion and other places. It is not possible that whenever the local authority wants to do well in the face of public demand - they do so at the expense of the landowners and developers. "

The Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality responded that "First of all, we emphasize that the Sde Dov plan is an approved plan, with the municipality seeing great importance in building 2,400 affordable housing units in the complex as a public goal and also promoting commercial areas. In any case, the request of the Contractors' Association was accepted and the municipality will address it as part of the legal proceedings. "