H ow did you get into this?
I’m a serial social entrepreneur; I see problems I see suffering and I want to do something about it. As the executive director of JOIN Israel a community-services organization I’ve been able to start and run more than 75 welfare family and educational projects. I’ve seen a lot of poverty and its devastating repercussions on the whole family but the needs are infinite and the resources are always very limited. There had to be a way to go beyond JOIN Israel’s budgetary capacity to create a social enterprise with a revenue stream that would cover most of its costs after start-up.
Why mortgages?
We spent a full year researching ways we could reduce the financial strains of thousands of families. Conceptually there are two ways to address poverty: by increasing income — through career training job placement even charity — and by decreasing expenditures. The two largest regular expenses are food and housing so reducing mortgage payments saves a family a lot of money obviously. Food prices are kept low by strong supermarket competition and community food programs so we turned to reducing mortgage payments. We learned that a good mortgage broker can save you NIS 100 000 or more on your mortgage. Reducing monthly payments by NIS 350 to 400 for 25 to 30 years makes a big difference to a struggling family!
How does Tzavta Mashkantot help with that?
It’s simple. Mortgage brokers are too expensive for many families — the brokers’ charge with VAT costs NIS 5 000 to well over NIS 10 000 while many families live on that amount a month. We were concerned that the poorest families the ones who needed this service the most were the least able to pay up front to save over the long-term. This initiative fixes that — we set you up with a yoetz mashkantah a mortgage broker at a reduced cost and he saves you hundreds of shekels each month for the next 25-plus years.
Who’s your clientele?
Originally we wanted to target the poorest families. But l’maiseh 90 percent of the tzibbur faces enormous financial stress — close to 100 percent when it’s time to marry off children! Also we learned that if we serviced only the borderline families the banks didn’t want to work with us. By bringing relatively financially stable families as well they were willing to push to help our neediest families.
