Is the saga of Tel Aviv’s Haragazim neighborhood about to end? Nearly thirty years after it began, letters are now being sent to neighborhood residents asking them to sign agreements to vacate their homes. In return, most of them will receive apartments in the project scheduled to be built on the site. Some residents received evacuation orders.
The Haragazim neighborhood is a 163-dunam (41-acre) area registered as belonging to the Israel Lands Authority, located in southern Tel Aviv between the Ezra neighborhood, Darom Park, and the Hatikva neighborhood. The site was the site of the Arab village of Salama. After the War of Independence, Jews settled in the homes, some with the encouragement of the Jewish Agency. Others built new homes there. However, the state never recognized the property rights of the first settlers to the site or those who came after them, but did not rush to remove them.
The result is that individuals took over land on the site and built houses with gardens and small businesses. The state and municipality have never built infrastructure at the site, which looks like a temporary camp.
In the 1990s, the Israel Lands Authority began planning and regulating the neighborhood, including removing squatters. In 1996, before land tenders for the site were issued by the Israel Lands Authority, a plan for the area was approved. The Israel Lands Authority also conducted a survey and found that there were 167 homes in the area. Residents claimed at the time that the survey was wrong and overlooked dozens of families living in the neighborhood.
Land bids were held but were canceled due to lawsuits that began to pile up regarding the neighborhood. Finally, a tender was held in 1998 which was won by Friedman Khakshuri and Aviod Real Estate. They were later joined by Elad Israel Residences (now the Dunietz-Elad Group). The winners were tasked with evacuating the residents, according to the plan drawn up by the Israel Lands Authority.
Under this plan, only someone who has lived in the neighborhood for ten years or more will receive a 110-square-meter apartment, compensation of $50,000 per family, and a monthly rent of $500 per person for up to three years. That plan served as the basis for everything that happened after that, but almost 30 years later, it’s clear that it did little to speed things up.
Twenty years ago, Friedman Khakshori succeeded in reaching a settlement with some residents of the southern part of the neighborhood, and built a 17-storey tower containing 66 apartments, which the rights holders occupied under the terms of the tender. After selling part of the project to Doenitz-Elad (Elad Residences owned by Yitzhak Tshuva), the latter built 17-storey buildings on the remaining area in the south of the neighborhood, in a project called Park Tel Aviv. About thirty other residents were housed in this project.
Ronen Yaffa, CEO of Donitz-Elad, told Globes that the project built in the southern part of the neighborhood “pulled the Ha-Argazim neighborhood wagon out of the mud.” But the main problem lies in the larger northern part of the neighborhood (127 dunums), where most of the residents live. The legal proceedings and social protests that accompanied the eviction proceedings continued to delay the plan’s implementation, and progress only began in the second half of the last decade.
The Tel Aviv municipality started a plan in the northern part of the neighborhood that was approved last year. It consists of seven towers, each of which consists of 22 to 32 floors, and each contains 1,870 apartments, 174 of which are for rent, in addition to 300 shaded residential units.
The Tel Aviv Municipality told Globes: “The process of developing the Harjazim neighborhood required a social plan that would allow for the development of the neighborhood while providing a suitable solution for the people who own properties there and who arrived after the tender was published.” The process of drafting the plan took three years, and included a dialogue between representatives of the neighborhood residents and developers, mediated by the Tel Aviv Municipality. In the end, it was decided that the persons recognized as property rights would sign a vacation compensation agreement with the developers.
As we mentioned, the 1996 tender talked about apartments with an area of 110 square meters (four rooms) and a financial compensation of 50 thousand dollars. Those who came to live in the neighborhood between 1986 and 1994 will receive three-room apartments. Those who arrived between 1995 and 1998 will pay NIS 750,000 for apartments; Whoever moved there between 1999 and 2004 will pay one million shekels.
Children of those eligible under the tender who were 43 years old or older in 1996 will also receive free apartments, while children younger than that will pay an amount ranging between NIS 750,000 and NIS 1.25 million for apartments.
Market prices for apartments can reach 35 thousand shekels per square meter, so that the value of the benefits that residents receive amounts to at least 1.5 million shekels today. In total, 240 apartments will be allocated to them in the project. The right of about 350 residents of the neighborhood to receive compensation has been recognized, but there are those who have not been recognized and claim that they were deprived of their rights. Most claims have been rejected by the courts, meaning that those who have not proven their entitlement and refuse eviction will have legal orders issued against them in the past enforced. Their number is estimated to be small.
Ronen Jaffa explained that the developer waited until recently before sending the eviction agreement letters because the compensation plan could only advance after obtaining an approved building plan. The project is currently in the architectural design phase, and Jaffa hopes to obtain building permits within two years, meaning that the Ha-Arjazim neighborhood circle will close exactly thirty years after the original tender put out by the Israel Lands Authority.
Published by Globes, Israel Business News – en.globes.co.il – on November 24, 2024.
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