The Knesset discussed the rights of tenants whose apartments were damaged during the war with Iran

According to the Bat Yam municipality, 19 buildings in different areas of the city that were damaged by Iranian rocket attacks are still uninhabitable. The Treasury Department said that there are currently no families staying in hotels during the evacuation, but the Treasury Department does not have information about families still living in alternative rental housing.

Commission Chairman Gilad Kariv said he had received information from citizens who had rented housing for a year and were faced with demands to vacate it in the coming months.

According to him, when people had to rent apartments instead of those destroyed by the war, the lease was for at least a year. Some families have been asked to return to damaged homes despite existing rental agreements for alternative accommodation.

“We must make sure that the state does not require these people to leave alternative housing during the current contract,” he said. “The state is obliged to respect the contracts signed by evacuees and not evict people prematurely.”

Finance Ministry spokeswoman Chaya Levy noted that the contracts were concluded based on the projected time frame for returning damaged houses to a habitable condition. In cases where a family is offered to move into a damaged apartment before the end of the lease on an alternative apartment, the Ministry of Finance, according to her, is ready to pay the appropriate fines.

She emphasized that compensation is paid until the family receives their home back in “the same condition as before the damage,” or until the end of the lease on an alternative apartment (whichever comes first).

A spokesman for the Ministry of Aliyah and Absorption said 135 repatriate families were evacuated across the country, and the last family left the hotel about a month ago. The department is working on specific problems that a number of families have encountered and finding solutions to them, and more detailed data will be presented at the next meeting.

Summing up the discussion, Gilad Kariv promised to schedule a control meeting on this issue and asked the Ministry of Finance to supplement the data on the number of families who are forced to live in alternative housing due to damage to their home and property.