British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 696

CHAPTER XVI.

151. The estimated population of Haifa (municipal area) by the end of 1945 is 134,000 (68,000 Jews and 66,000 Arabs). From table 1-1 it will be seen that 41 % of the Arab population and 5.4% of the Jewish live in slum areas. The low incidence of •Jewish slums is due largely to the fact that workers' quarters have been built in the Haifa Bay areas and most of the Jewish housing in the Haifa municipal area is comparatively modern. There is, however, considerable over-crowding in Hadar Hacarmel. The Arab quarters of the Old City contain a number of better type houses which have deteriorated into slum property of the tenement type. In the Eastern quarter where the houses are newer and flat-roofed many families have erected flimsy structures of mats and sacking on the roofs of houses already crammed to capacity. A feature of this area is the large caves in which 2,000 persons are living, usually three of four families to a cave for which rent is paid to the owner of land. Jn summer the camping conditions are tolerable but in winter deplorable. Very few of the cave-dwellers are there by choice.

152. Living conditions within the municipal boundary of Haifa "re further complicated by numbers of Gburani "squatters" who have erected primitive dwellings of tin, sacks or boards wherever a convenient site can be found. Also within the municipal area but on the outskirts thereof, a number of families live under deplorable conditions in huts made of beaten-out petrol tins. The huts are huddled together on low-lying ground with no sanitation, lighting or heating.

153. The Haifa city engineer states that "slum conditions in Haifa are caused not so much by over-crowding as by the insanitary and badly ventilated condition of the houses and the fact that most of the slum areas are not provided with a modern water-borne sewerage system". To which might be added the need for a building scheme to re-house the over-crowded and to house the wretched dwellers in huts, caves and temporary structures.

154. There are bad patches of slum property in other urban areas, more particularly in the older Arab towns. Gaza and Nablus have some extremely bad houses and Ramleh, Lydda and Jenin have bad patches of over-crowded and insanitary dwellings. The problem in the smaller towns is, however, more nearly similar in scope to village planning than urban development.

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