Housing in YESHA

Contrary to the various reports the Left creatively produces about Jewish residents wanting to "flee back" to the pre-1967 Israel, there's a major housing shortage in many of the yishuvim (Jewish communities.) Even the radical Left wing newspaper Ha'Aretz admits it.

Shiloh has a waiting list for homes. I don't like saying bad things about my neighbors, but if we had better, more forward thinking administration here there would be over four hundred or more families instead of three hundred, and there would be at least a hundred more houses/units under construction.

Young couples, especially when one or both grew up in Judea/Samaria/Gaza/Golan/Jordan Valley know what the truly "good life" is and don't want to spend a fortune on a small city apartment, when less money will get them a larger home and a friendly community. Also, it's very common that today's couples both work and in different cities, so a place like Shiloh is an easy commute for both.

A few yishuvim, like Kedumim and Ofra have their own building companies, so they manage to build what's needed and control who buys. Though recently, there have been problems in Ofra, because not all the land is state owned. Ironically, when Ofra was established about thirty-five years ago, the government approved the location and insisted that it was superior to Shiloh, where that garin, settlement group, had really wanted to be.

There is lots of government land in the Gush Shiloh (block) area. But the Ofra garin wanted Shiloh for the historic and symbolic reasons that in Biblical times Shiloh was the first capital of the Jewish Nation, and the Tabernacle rested here for three-hundred and sixty-nine (369) years.

Today's Shiloh, though not the largest in Gush Shiloh, it is the central village with the regional elementary schools, boys and girls to the 8th grade, a large industrial zone, a number of stores, businesses and a hesder yeshiva. We're in the middle of the bus route between Jerusalem and Ariel, which easily connects us to Tel Aviv and Petach Tikvah. The Jordan Valley is just to the east of us, on the other side of Shvut Rachel.

Like many of the "less ambitious" Jewish villages, our recent housing has been dependent on, or in conjunction with Moetzet YESHA's Amana building company. They're now building ten houses, rather than the fifty I'd recommend. Personally, I think that it would be easier to sell a neighborhood of fifty than ten, but although I control this blog, I don't control Shiloh. The cost of these houses is less than a tiny forty year old shikkun public housing apartment in Jerusalem.

Thank G-d, there's another housing project going up in Shiloh. It's a private initiative by a young man raised here. He's offering a much larger unit in a multi-family building for about the same price. It has the feel of a private home and is large enough so that either two small, young families could share its cost or it could be divided into an owner's home and rental for extra income.

In the meantime as every available home is being snatched up by eager buyers, renters are getting desperate.

As I understand, that's the situation in many YESHA communities.