During this past week, many evacuees were evicted from the hotels in which they have been living for months. Some may have no choice other than to return to a war zone where their lives will be in constant danger and where their mental health will be at risk. Others have nowhere to go because their homes have either been destroyed or are so badly damaged that they are uninhabitable.
On top of all that, they worry about the education of their children. Where will they go when school starts next month?
In the past, the Jerusalem Municipality has come up with all kinds of creative solutions to alleviate the city’s problems. For instance, when Economy and Industry Minister Nir Barkat was mayor, he doubled the arnona tax of absentee landlords. Admittedly this put more money in the municipal coffers, but with few exceptions it did not really make more apartments available for rent.
However, current Mayor Moshe Lion could, if he wants to, introduce a new city ordinance whereby any new apartment which remains unoccupied for three months must be made available to an evacuee family for a token rent for a period of at least a year. Developers who do not comply will be heavily fined, and their lack of compliance will be used against them when seeking approval for another development project. This could also be beneficial to the developers in that many new buildings have flaws that are not immediately discernible. If the evacuee families housed in such buildings report the flaws to the developer, they can be fixed before the apartment is sold. That will avoid future quarrels and court cases and will also ensure that all residential units are in good condition when sold.
New high-rise buildings are going up in every neighborhood, but it’s doubtful whether they can all be fully occupied by new immigrants or even as the result of a substantial increase in the birth rate. A designated department within the municipality should keep track of when residential building projects are completed and to what extent they are occupied three months after completion. All unsold or unrented apartments should be made available to evacuees. Anyone who thought that the wandering Jew syndrome would disappear once Jews were freely able to return to their ancestral homeland was mistaken. Some of the evacuees have lived in two, three, and more hotels since being forced out of their homes less than a year ago.
Where'd the chairs come from?
■ DID THE municipality acquire a job lot from some manufacturer or importer of garden furniture who went bankrupt? The number of chairs and benches scattered throughout the city, both downtown and in suburbia, though very welcome, are just a little too plentiful – especially in relation to the number of public toilets. There are definitely more public toilets than there used to be, but still too few and far between, and most of the additions are either portable or have only three cubicles – one for men, one for women, and one for people with physical disabilities. To the credit of the municipality, the latter have wide doors and more than enough space for a wheelchair to turn around without difficulty.
New buildings, same unpaved asphalt
■ WHERE THE municipality is less concerned is in the placement of traffic lights and the paving of roads and sidewalks which are full of fissures and potholes. What is the point of constructing impressive modern towers if the area on which they stand is cracked and broken with uneven patches of tar on the surface of the asphalt? Surely, Israel’s hi-tech achievements in the field of construction materials can extend to roads and sidewalks.
Among the more dangerous intersections in Jerusalem is the one adjacent to the Belgian Consulate in Talbiyeh, with traffic coming from several directions across an unusually wide road. The widow of a man killed by a tourist bus when crossing the road a few years back was worried about other pedestrians, especially after hearing that someone else had been killed while crossing the same road. When the mayor visited the synagogue that she attends, she thought it was a good opportunity to tackle him over the absence of traffic lights at such a dangerous crossing. But the mayor was not interested in pursuing the matter and turned away.
Electric bike, scooter laws go unenforced
■ THIS WAS not the only example of the municipality thumbing its nose at pedestrians. Despite the fact that a law has gone into effect to prohibit the riding of electric bikes and scooters and any other electric vehicles on the sidewalk, there is no one around from the municipality or the police to enforce this. Not only that, but motorcyclists also traverse the sidewalk at breakneck speed. Even on streets such as Keren Hayesod, where the sidewalks on both sides are quite wide, pedestrians are not safe from speeding bikes, scooters, and micro cars that are supposedly produced for people who have difficulty in walking, but these small vehicles are so much cheaper and easier to park than a regular car that people without mobility problems buy them and drive them on the sidewalk, though some actually use the road, remaining close to the curb. They also drive these vehicles into the supermarket and down the aisles. It can be quite scary – and no one in authority does anything about it.
Can no one stop the jaywalker menace?
■ FOR THAT matter, no one in authority does anything about jaywalkers. It’s bad enough when a lone adult crosses against the lights, but when an adult wheeling a baby carriage with a tiny tot inside crosses against the lights while speaking on a cellphone or checking email, that’s not just a traffic violation, that’s criminal!
Unlike the prime minister, who comes into office because his party received the largest number of votes (with the notable exception of Naftali Bennett), the mayor is personally elected. He should bear that in mind when he does little or nothing in the sphere of public safety.
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