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NEWS
Chareidi Sector Lacks Over 30,000 Apartments
By M. Green
"The dire shortage of professional workers in the construction
industry will lead to a dramatic drop in buildings starts in the
chareidi sector in the near future," warned Eldad Nitzan, chairman of
the Chamber of Commerce's Union of Professional Construction Personnel
Companies. Despite the acute apartment shortage, he says, human
resources companies are unable to meet the demand for professional
workers due to lower quotas for professional foreign workers in the
construction industry.
According to Housing Ministry estimates, of the 100,000 apartments
lacking in the market — due to the gap formed over the past
decade between the rate of housing starts and the completion of new
housing units annually — some 30,000 were apartments that should
have been built for the chareidi sector, but never got off the
ground.
In recent years, of the 40,000 new households created in an average
year, an estimated 15-20 percent are chareidi households, which means
about 7,000 new housing units should be built annually for new
chareidi households — without regard to the housing shortage
that has accumulated over the past decade.
Nitzan says in order to cover the cumulative surplus demand, 10,000
housing units would have to go up every year just to meet the needs of
the chareidi sector. "In practice," he notes, "construction in the
chareidi sector is less than half that amount."
The chart shows the building stats in several chareidi communities
over the past 10 years.
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