Hundreds of Tel Aviv Houses on Brink of Collapse: Israel's Buildings Are Crumbling
The sight of ceilings collapsing onto apartment floors at 44 Jaffa Road in Tel Aviv's Florentin neighborhood earlier this month, on Passover eve, was horrifying.
The old industrial building collapsed, moderately injuring a man and a woman and leaving dozens in shock, most of them young people who lived and worked there. Nearby buildings were evacuated over concerns about their stability.
Despite numerous alarms that day, official sources say there is no connection between the Iran war and the collapse, though many of the people we spoke with do not rule out a link.
The Tel Aviv municipality was quick to clarify that responsibility for the building's structural integrity lies with the apartment owners. But in Israel, unlike in other countries, there is no law requiring periodic building maintenance. In practice, this leads to neglect, especially in buildings occupied mainly by young renters. In recent years, more and more old buildings have collapsed, and not because they were hit by a missile.
The collapse in south Tel Aviv brought Adam Elgressy back to September 12, 2021, when the building where he had lived with his wife and daughters for a decade, at 38 Serlin Street in Holon, collapsed.
"The day before it happened, residents noticed the apartment doors wouldn't open. There was a kind of explosion in one of the parking lot walls, and it was decided the building was dangerous and had to be evacuated immediately," Elgressy recalls.
"The next day, when the municipality came to demolish it, it collapsed before they could even touch it. I've seen people from the Florentin building on social media saying they want to go back and get their belongings. I tell them it's not worth it. If we had gone back in before demolition, it would have collapsed on us. It's not worth feeling the floor shake under you for a T-shirt."
Elgressy says the current legal framework makes it impossible for residents to know whether their building is at risk. "Local authorities put the responsibility on apartment owners to make sure there's no safety hazard, but there are no guidelines on what maintenance means or how to do it. People aren't engineers. They can't X-ray a building to see what's happening inside the walls."
A month earlier, in August 2021, a similar incident occurred in Ramat Gan. Residents of a dilapidated building at 33 Bialik Street were ordered to evacuate after cracks were discovered and a shop window on the ground floor shattered. The next day, when the municipality demolished it, it became clear that one of the support columns had split in two, confirming that the building's structural stability had been compromised.
In September 2025, a balcony in an old building at 105 Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv collapsed from the first floor onto the roof of the Yashka shawarma restaurant below. Because it happened on a Saturday, the restaurant was closed and no one was injured. Municipal engineers found that the cause was crumbling old concrete. The building, constructed in 1936 by architect Yehuda Magidovitch, was designated for preservation.
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