What is better when it comes to living well? Would you prefer a huge or tiny house? The answer depends on who you ask.
Developers and their business consultants seem to have unequivocal views. They want to increase supply of ‘smaller houses’ to have a broader customer base.
The customer base of the housing market is mixed, and every potential buyer has particular priorities. Policymakers too often engage in the art of doublespeak by being deliberately euphemistic, ambiguous, or using obscure language when defining priorities for housing development.
A KPMG report on the local housing market offers some advice to policymakers, developers, and presumably present and future homeowners.
On the pretext that Maltese housing units being “the biggest in the EU”, the report argues that planners should be thinking about building smaller homes. They do not define what a smaller home should be like. Still, relying on the internationally accepted definition, micro houses in heavily built areas like Malta are typically described as about 50 sq m.
Undoubtedly, the quality-of-life debate is becoming louder, with many hard-working families arguing that standard of living improvements must not be at the cost of increasing deterioration in their quality of life.
KPMG acknowledges this crucial reality and recommends that the idea of developing smaller housing units “would require careful deliberation” since it could well impact residents’ quality of life.
Defining the right size will always depend on a combination of factors. The risk is that the influential developers’ lobby will continue to resort to using its financial clout to get policymakers to enact policies that suit the industry’s get-rich-quick mindset.
Many understandably argue they have no faith in politicians and their political masters’ commitment to invest in the quality of life of ordinary people.
It is not just the prices of property that are out of control. There is little commitment to preserving our rural and urban cultural heritage. Traditional houses keep being pulled down and replaced by pencil developments of ugly small apartments.
Moreover, our towns’ few open public spaces are being earmarked for property development and use by private catering establishments.
Many today can only afford to live in apartments with insufficient outdoor spaces. They are also being denied the small ‘luxury’ of enjoying public gardens and open spaces. The hard truth is that the vision of Malta as a Singapore, Hong Kong, or Dubai in the Mediterranean is ingrained in the collective mindset of this administration.
Policymakers will put the cart before the horse when they define planning policies to suit an economic model that depends on an ever-increasing population through migration.
Planners can correct some of the anomalies in the housing market. Like most Western countries, the local baby boomer empty nesters, the generation between the ages of 60 and 78, own twice as many of the country’s three-bedroomed-or-larger homes as millennials with children.
Many are reluctant to downsize because the property market is not providing enough alternative homes built with the needs of older adults in mind.
We have a housing mismatch for older homeowners. More needs to be done to encourage housing well suited for older people.
For too long, housing development has been focusing on maximising profits at the cost of deteriorating living conditions for most people. It is time to put people before profits by defining policies that meet the country’s realistic economic priorities without treating people as disposable commodities.