As a result of a petition filed in May 2008 by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the Construction and Housing Ministry began to publish the complete list of its procedures on the Ministry’s web site. The complete procedures have been published for the first time on the following site:
http://www.moch.gov.il/Moch/LawsAndRegulations/RegulationsList.htm
The request to upload the procedures to the site was included in a petition recently filed on behalf of a homeless prisoner (Administrative Petition 8391/08). Until now, the Construction and Housing Ministry had an unknown and unpublished procedure, which allows prisoners, while still in prison, to apply to the Construction and Housing Ministry and to take full advantage of a procedure allowing them to request housing assistance before being released. If this procedure was effectively published it would prevent a prisoner from being ejected onto the street and into night shelters upon release. In the petition submitted in his name, ACRI demanded, among other things, that the Construction and Housing Ministry procedures should be published.
On July 28, 2008, the State informed ACRI that the legal advisor of the Construction and Housing’s Ministry had instructed that the procedures be uploaded to the Ministry’s site. Over the past few days, the Ministry’s procedures have begun to appear on their site.
The publication of the procedures is essential and of unparalleled importance. As ACRI cautioned in its report on the infringement of tenants’ rights, “Real Estate of Rights: Housing Rights and Government Police in Israel” (July 2008), Israel’s assistance policy is based on internal and unpublished procedures which determine the housing rights of hundreds of thousands of people. ACRI will monitor and ensure that all Construction and Housing Ministry procedures are uploaded to the Internet as required.
The Construction and Housing Ministry joins the Interior Ministry, which, following a petition by ACRI (Administrative Petition 530/07) and a ruling by the Jerusalem Administrative Court, began publishing its procedures on the Internet, after years wherein its procedures were not properly published.
