When new neighborhoods are, or a new city is, built, it might be one thing to plan what the neighborhood, or city, will look like, and it might be another to see how it actually does turn out. Perhaps the intended, target audience loves it and moves en masse to the area, perhaps they don't like it and ignore it. Perhaps others like it and move in, changing the style from the original intentions. While certain types of small communities might be able to exert a certain amount of control as to who is allowed to buy and move to the area, cities and neighborhoods of cities don't really have the ability to control that, beyond making it attractive for some groups and less attractive for others.

Harish might be an example of this. Harish is a new city that was just approved to be built in the Wadi Ara area up north. The intention is that the city will be designed for, and inhabited by, the haredi community. the cheap prices, if nothing else, is making Harish very attractive to many people besides for the originally intended audience.

According to Globes, a group has been put together to compete for a tender in Harish. That by itself is not big news. Numerous groups are being put together, as the 5000 units in Harish are up now for tenders for the next two months, so lots of groups are being put together to bid on groups of buildings to buy at great prices. What makes the prices so cheap and attractive in Harish is that the Ministry of Housing and the Lands Authority have decided that the land would be given away at no charge. That significantly decreases the potential cost of building your home in Harish. What makes the group so unique is that it is a group comprised of non-haredi Israelis looking to take advantage of the unusually cheap prices of housing despite the intention being that the area will be a haredi city.

The group is looking to place a bid for a set of 400 housing units, and so far, according to Globes, 50 people have already registered to buy with the group. Their idea, as they say, is why shouldnt they too be able to take advantage of the great prices, in this once in a lifetime opportunity to buy a house with no costs of land. A new house in a new city, without the need to take an impossibly large mortgage. What could be better?

How do they deal with the fact that it is meant to be a haredi city, and that might leave their future lifestyle  there in question?

With the intention to bring at least 1000 families (they are planning to bid now on 400 units, but there will be more tenders becoming available in the future that they plan to participate in, assuming they have success with the early tenders) to the area, they say it wont be a problem. As Yisrael Avital, one of the heads of the group, says, right now harish is not haredi, so the future of Harish is right now up in the air. If we, he says, can put together and organize as a group, it wont be them living in a haredi city, but it could be the haredim living in a secular city. The city is going to be built - the attempts to stop it have failed. Now the question is who will live in it.

Even with the overall nature of Harish going to be clearly haredi, they have no problem with buying sections of harish and having them as secular areas. As they say, the city can have different neighborhoods, just like Jerusalem.

In other areas as well, such as Bet Shemesh among other places, where construction has been fought, at a certain point it must be accepted as fact that the city or neighborhood will be built. When that happens, it does not have to mean that the original intentions will be carried out - anyone can still organize groups and buy out areas. if people are feeling a housing shortage, they should take advantage of all these areas being built with special benefits to create cheap pricing. Diversity is great, and there is nothing stopping anyone from buying.

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