Inside Israel's homelessness crisis: A system struggling to keep up

Homelessness has become all too prevalent in Israel over the years, and the Israeli government’s system to combat it has not been entirely successful.

I hope that the research I have compiled sheds light on the homeless situation in Israel and brings awareness to NGOs like HomeBase that dedicate their time and resources to bettering the lives of those whom the Israeli government has struggled to reach.

Ori Shoham, founder-CEO of HomeBase, an NGO that helps Israel’s homeless transition back into society through group activities, told In Jerusalem that the State of Israel has reported approximately 3,500 street dwellers, the formal term Israeli policy uses for homeless.

Of the 3,500 currently recognized homeless in Israel, approximately 1,500 live in Tel Aviv, followed by around 300 in Jerusalem, Shoham said. The number of homeless in Israel, and the general population living in poverty, has only increased in recent years since COVID and post-Oct. 7.

In 2024, the OECD had already reported a larger number of 3,900 homeless individuals across Israel, 87% being men and 13% being women. Back in 2021, Tel Aviv’s municipality reported 1,300 known homeless, according to Haaretz.

“Homeless people and street dwellers are the weakest link in our society,” Shoham said. “They have legal issues, they have money issues, they have physical issues, they have health issues, they have drug issues.”

The criteria for someone to be recognized as a street dweller in Israel, however, is harsher than in all other OECD countries, Shoham said.

To be formally recognized as a street dweller in Israel, the individual must be at least 18 years old, “live in abandoned houses, gardens, public places, or building locations” and be “suffering from physical and emotional neglect,” according to the Welfare and Social Affairs Ministry’s Social Work Regulations. These individuals are “usually without active relationships with their family, don’t put in the effort to change their way of life, and cannot lead a normal lifestyle.”

This definition excludes individuals who many would consider to be homeless but, according to Israel’s harsh government standards, are not. According to this definition, minors under the age of 18, people who cannot pay their rent or mortgage and are evicted from their homes, released prisoners, and people removed from their home under a court order due to domestic violence are not considered homeless.

Thus, they cannot receive the services and benefits the government offers the homeless population. The harsh criteria, therefore, do not capture the full picture of Israel’s homeless population, and the ministry’s estimate could be hundreds off from the true number.

Furthermore, in order to be formally recognized as a street dweller in Israel, each individual must go directly to their local municipality, which will then decide whether they fit the criteria of a street dweller. Not every homeless person is aware of this right, and some are not in the right mental or physical capacity to do this.

This is one explanation as to why non-profit organizations record a greater number of homeless people than official reports do. To know the number of street dwellers in Israel, the Welfare Ministry consulted reports of recognized street dwellers receiving social services. In 2019, this was approximately 2,000 people. In 2020, the number increased to approximately 2,250.

Local authorities additionally reported about 800 street dwellers who aren’t treated, of whom a few hundred push away care and a few hundred are not legally recognized as street dwellers but are struggling with homelessness.

Furthermore, the Welfare Ministry collects its data on homelessness by cross-checking it with an annual questionnaire that local authorities fill out. Not every person who qualifies as a street dweller will go to their local municipality, as previously explained, and the data excludes those that many would consider homeless but aren’t according to policy. Thus, the Welfare Ministry’s numbers do not accurately reflect the true number of homeless in Israel.

At the end of the day, NGOs across Israel, who encounter the homeless on a much more personal level and reach those that the government does not, report larger numbers than the official reports do. Policies and funding can suffer from this, though, if the government is blind to the fact that the problem is worse than the Welfare Ministry’s inaccurate reports claim.

Back in 2022, the Knesset released a crucial report, commissioned by MK Yasmin Sacks Friedman (Yesh Atid), that gives a deep dive into the government’s homeless support and the holes in the system. Beyond not having a true estimate of Israel’s homeless population, many reports and articles similarly argue that the Israeli government does not sufficiently support its known street dwellers.

One of the many critiques of the Knesset’s aid for the homeless is that Israel does not have a national homeless strategy or provide a permanent housing plan, unlike the US’s Housing First strategy and other countries.

The Welfare Ministry provides treatment units where social workers can provide individual support for the homeless. “No one will be able to actually recover on his own if he doesn’t have any kind of support from outside,” Shoham said. The Welfare Ministry also provides “gagonim” – temporary overnight shelters for emergencies.

In 2020, street dweller treatment units operated in 16 cities across Israel (6% of municipalities and 21% of all cities), with about 1,430 funded monthly slots with social services. In 2021, operations expanded to units in 19 cities (25% of all cities in Israel).

The supply of social workers still cannot keep up with the demand, with a ratio of about 10 social workers per 150 homeless patients, Shoham said. This means a patient will, on average, only be seen about once a month, which is not sufficient support for any homeless individual.

Along the same lines, in 2020, gagonim operated in only seven cities, providing about 180 beds total.

The government provides recognized street dwellers with two monthly stipends: NIS 800 to cover living costs and NIS 1,100 in aid in renting an apartment, which is paid directly to the landlords, Shoham said.

Despite the government’s efforts, the 2022 Knesset report concluded that only 27-33% of Israel’s street dwellers could be housed at any given time, which means there is a lot more work to do to ensure more homeless can be supported simultaneously.

The government spent about NIS 28.5 million on services for street dwellers in 2020, which includes additional expenditures related to the pandemic. According to Shoham, the current amount of allocated money toward homeless people is only about NIS 15 million a year.

There is also no budget solely allocated to homelessness, the 2022 Knesset report said. Rather, different ministries – including the Welfare Ministry, the Construction & Housing Ministry, and the Health Ministry – allocate some of their budget toward supporting Israel’s homeless and broader poverty-stricken population. But despite their best efforts, this system does not efficiently support the homeless.

“Everybody is doing a bit, but no one is looking at the big picture,” Shoham said.

“They don’t use their resources in a smart way,” he explained. “So they put money in, but you will not see one homeless person that gets back to life because of this, because it’s really shallow.”

The 2022 Knesset report revealed the number of Israelis living on the streets has increased over the past few years, and government services have been insufficient in helping all homeless people. Friedman commented that “there is a lack of holistic understanding of all the resources needed [to prevent people from winding up on the street] and rehabilitation,” Ynet reported in 2022.

Another strong critique is that the Israeli government uses a lot of its allocated homeless budget on immediate (emergency) support but not long-term support, according to Shoham. They need to focus on reallocating the funds better, he argued.

Taking all the wars since Oct. 7 into account, the government has had to allocate funds to more immediate causes over the last three years. “The budget for the IDF, border security, police, has to come from somewhere and it results in necessary cuts in other budgets like welfare,” Jo Kaplan, CEO of Israel Relief Aid, told In Jerusalem.

“Nobody now cares about the homeless. They haven’t been at the top of the priority, but now they are less and less, and the numbers grow because their problems haven’t gone anywhere,” Shoham said in reference to the lack of attention the homeless population has received with the necessary demands of the war.

But the lack of homeless support did not materialize only after Oct. 7. “Even five, 10 years ago, they haven’t been in the top priorities of the government and the officials to handle,” Shoham said.

That is where NGOs like HomeBase and the Israel Relief Aid come into the picture. They meet the needs of the homeless where government aid does not, especially since Oct. 7.

“Israel is dependent on its amutot, its nonprofits, to pick up the slack in welfare and help for the homeless, and as far as I know, it always has been this way,” Kaplan said. The Israel Relief Aid supports all types of people living under the poverty line. They also run the Tel Aviv Homeless Cafe, which gives the homeless free meals daily and jackets in the winter cold and rain.

HomeBase, founded in 2013 by Shoham, is another one of the many NGOs across Israel that does its part to help the homeless get back on their feet and join a warm community.

At its core, HomeBase is Israel’s soccer team in the Homeless World Cup. There are currently 75 countries that participate in the Homeless World Cup Foundation, and the teams are solely made up of homeless people. It breaks derogatory stereotypes and assumptions about homeless people, and joining a team gives the players a sense of belonging and builds up their self-confidence.

“When we play with them on the field, then the different backgrounds don’t matter,” Shoham said.

Especially for the homeless who fall back into their bad habits and decide to go to rehabilitation before joining the team, they know they have a community at HomeBase to return to once they are clean.

HomeBase’s players usually live on the streets, in hostels, or in shared apartments with other homeless people. Shoham explained the process of recruitment: first, HomeBase volunteers establish some form of contact with the homeless individual, through conversation and offering food. In the next interaction, they extend an offer to join the HomeBase community, which the homeless individual hopefully accepts after another few visits from HomeBase volunteers.

HomeBase also has lockers, a women’s choir, Friday night dinners, and a relatively new theater group for their homeless recruits.

Shoham stressed that HomeBase does not replace the efforts of the local municipalities but rather works directly with them to fill in the necessary gaps. HomeBase, like many NGOs, has access and can develop personal connections with the homeless population in a way that the local government establishments cannot. Shoham said HomeBase uses their interactive position to “try to bring them [the homeless] to the establishment and use the resources available in the community.”

A common misconception is that people become homeless because of their own bad habits and/or choices. Really, it’s the opposite, Shoham said.

“Most of the people are just like you and me and [at] some point in their life, they encountered some kind of a crisis,” he explained. “It can be an immigration crisis. It can be a mental crisis. It can be an economic crisis. It can be divorce; any kind of big crisis. And then if they don’t have a good, strong support network, or their family, their friends, or the community, then it’s pretty easy to get them into a bad situation.”

Dues also begin to pile up, and it gets to the point where the individual has no way of paying them back.

Then, they resort to drugs. “It’s not [that] you are using drugs and then you become homeless,” Shoham said, demystifying a popular stereotype about homeless people. “Usually you end up in a bad situation, and then you try to use alcohol or drugs just to forget reality. And then it becomes your reality.”

“And then you don’t see any light,” he continued. “I would never be able to do that. And then they just continue, surviving their daily life.”

So how can we help? According to Shoham, a simple act like giving the homeless something to eat and treating them with kindness makes a big difference.

“Imagine that, if you see him now in his worst situation, then that’s how he is now,” Shoham said. “He hadn’t been like that a year ago or 10 years ago.

“He is a person like you and me. And he’s also able to get back and change the way he is.”

The reality is the Israeli government needs to do more to support its homeless population, whether it’s allocating government funds more productively or broadening the criteria for a street dweller so that more homeless people can receive government aid.

Since Oct. 7, the Israeli government, understandably, has had other issues that must take priority over the needs of relatively “smaller” problems. The support from well-established NGOs across the country has, without a doubt, made a difference in the lives of hundreds of homeless individuals.

Kaplan has personally brought in around 700 aid containers since 2000, paid for by donors.

“Huge aid containers really help the poor and homeless in Israel – but I learned through it that there is never an end to the need, and also never an end to the homeless,” Kaplan said. “I do believe, though, that this aid has helped to keep the percentage of poverty in Israel at bay, and maybe even lower it.”

But there is only so much NGOs can do alone. The Israeli government must step up where and when they can, amidst the demands of war, to better support its homeless population.

“I think that we haven’t seen the full effect of the war because there are soldiers in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza now. So the war isn’t going anywhere,” Shoham said.

“So if we can help more people, then we are blessed.”