More on poverty and crime in Israel

Israeli daily Ynet News reported:

Behind the reports and figures on poverty in Israel hide the painful pictures of distressed neighborhoods that are home to a third generation of poverty – Israel's urban islands of neglect and crime.

This is the situation in large parts of downtown Haifa, which Ynet revealed as part of a new report called "Israel Lowest Rung," highlighting the stories of individuals living in appalling conditions in Israel.

The senior residents of Jaffa Street, most of whom are Christian, live in the heart of downtown Haifa and suffer from neglect that has spanned decades.

The accelerated process of urban development around the neighborhood, but not in it, has exaggerated the problems of its weakened residents.

Whoever could manage to leave has run away.

Majiid Jacob, head of the neighborhood council in downtown Haifa, took Ynet reporters to the home of Joseph Retsch, a young man who was forced to leave his parents home.

"Look at what a ruin he sleeps in, without a shower or running water he is forced to defecate in a bottle.

This whole area is neglected and he is not part of the municipality's plans," said Jacob "We pay property taxes like any other citizen but we never had playgrounds.

There have always been prostitutes and drug addicts.

Criminals were raised here because children had nothing to do.

I remember the holes where we used to play marbles.

My children play in those same holes," said Amir Blan a resident who lives on the same street in downtown Haifa.

Sixty-three-year-old Samiya's children were able to leave the neighborhood, but she has nowhere to go.

She lives on social security, NIS 2,700, in a crumbling apartment with the ceiling plaster peeling due to dampness.

"In the neighborhoods of Wadi Nisnas and al-Khalisa they help residents, but here they do not.

The residents of Jaffa Street do not have money to fix their apartments so they sell them to people from Tel Aviv," said Samiya.

They also suffer from serious health hazards, partly because of sewage and garbage that drain into a shaft of a building on the street.

When residents turned to the municipality, they were told that the building with the sewage and garbage drainage was private and there was nothing that could be done about the issue.