The Israeli government plans to approve extended state-funded housing for 68,000 people, offering continued help to those displaced by the ongoing fighting in the North and South.
Currently, about 13,580 people are staying in state-funded hotels and temporary housing. Another 54,555 evacuees are living in communities, including around 4,200 from southern Israel, and are receiving financial support for their living expenses. The Tourism Ministry, led by Minister Haim Katz, has been handling the evacuation efforts for over a year. Evacuees are staying in hundreds of hotels and thousands of other places across the country.
So far, the cost of evacuating people has gone over NIS 9 billion. Out of this, NIS 6 billion was paid to hotels and private property owners. Katz came up with an idea to let displaced people choose self-housing grants instead. These grants are NIS 200 per adult and NIS 100 per child each day. This plan has saved the government more than NIS 5 billion. The savings occured because self-housing is substantially cheaper than staying in hotels.