Hermit faces eviction from 50-year-old cave home

For over 50 years, a self-described hermit has carved out a cave home for himself by the sea, because he loves the sound of the ocean. But now authorities want him out.

Nissim Kahlon faces eviction from his cave home of five decades.

For over 50 years, a self-described hermit has carved out a cave home for himself by the sea, because he loves the sound of the ocean.

But he now faces eviction from his treasured abode, due to a decree issued when he began to build it five decades ago.

According to Fox News, the Israeli man is refusing to budge from his lifetime achievement.

I really love the sea,” Nissim Kahlon told the Tazpit Press Service (TPS). “I don’t have money to buy a home.”

“I am not leaving here. I am ready for them to bury me here. I have nowhere to go, I have no other home.”

Kahlon says he won’t be leaving.

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Kahlon, 77, faces eviction as Israeli authorities, including the Israel Land Authority and the Environmental Protection Ministry have deemed his home dangerous for the coastline and illegal for habitation.

He told the Associated Press that the authorities are “denigrating” him.

In a statement to TPS, the Environmental Protection Ministry called the house “a significant environmental, and security, hazard, according to professional reviews on behalf of the Herzliya Municipality, which is subordinate to the ministry.”

“In the reviews that the Herzliya Municipality have released throughout the years it seems that the building is dangerous, and that the cliff is falling apart,” the statement added.

“The municipality even informed the ministry that they have alternative accommodational solutions.”

Inside the cave home. Picture: YouTube

Kahlon admitted that he had received a demolition order in 1974, just after he had started building his home, but no one carried it out, and he never heard any further issue from authorities until last year.

The notice is on hold until he finishes his appeal, which he has initiated with support from friends and family who have started crowdfunding to cover his legal expenses.

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Kahlon was living in a tent along the Herzliya Beach in 1973 when he started digging into the sandstone cliffs and creating a cave. He added to the simple cave over time, adding more rooms and filling it with material he gathered from the beach and dumpsters around Tel Aviv.

The home has no telephone or internet connection, and people can only reach Kahlon by visiting personally or reaching out to a social worker who knows him.

Authorities claim the home is dangerous.

“From the stones I quarry, I make a cast and build a wall. There’s no waste here, only material, that’s the logic,” Kahlon explained.

“Everything is useful, there’s no trash.”

Kahlon acknowledged that he built the home without any permits, and he had to shut down a restaurant he tried to open because of city hall opposition, but he argues that officials tacitly approved of his home when they connected his home to the electric grid decades ago.

But the EPM has raised concerns in light of explosions at an abandoned facility in the 1990s that damaged the integrity of the cliffs, which have only continued to deteriorate in the intervening years.

Another explosion earlier this year compounded the damage.

The ministry also said Kahlon had caused “significant damage to the cliff, endangered the public and reduced the beach for public passage” over the past 50 years. It says the recent explosion only increases the potential risk to the cliff.

The Herzliya municipality and EPM have continued to argue over who has the responsibility to deal with the condition of the area, with the EPM ultimately taking the charge to issue the eviction notice, while the Herzliya municipality allegedly found alternative housing for Kahlon, which he does not appear keen to take up.

The home sits next to Tel Aviv’s Herzliya Beach.

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Parts of this article originally appeared on Fox News and are republished here with permission.

Originally published as Hermit faces eviction from 50-year-old cave home