Opposition says funding for social housing being reduced

Opposition social welfare spokesman Karl Chircop yesterday criticised the government for having reduced funding for social housing provided by the Housing Authority, arguing that in the current economic climate where the people's spending power was falling, funding actually needed to be steeply increased.

Speaking during the debate on the financial estimates of the Housing Authority, Dr Chircop said the housing problem was serious and reflected bigger and more general problems such as marital problems, crime and underemployment. A serious government would consider all these related aspects in formulating its policy.

Over the past few years social expenditure on subsidies by the Housing Authority had been highest under Labour, when spending had reached Lm3.6 million in 1997 and Lm3.75 million in 1998. When considering inflation one would find that, to do justice, social housing expenditure should go up to around Lm6 million this year. But for this year such expenditure by the authority would actually be reduced to Lm3.3 million from Lm3.6 million last year.

How could the authority, with this amount, face the expected influx of calls for help in view of what constituted a frontal attack on the welfare system in the last budget?

Dr Chircop said it was shameful that the funding allocation for the interest subsidy on house loans was going down from Lm300,000 to Lm200,000, while subsidies on rentals would go from Lm45,000 to Lm35,000.

The housing, construction and maintenance vote for upgrading of housing estates would drop from Lm380,000 to Lm310,000, and funding for major repairs to government tenements would reach Lm370,000 from the current Lm720,000.

Dr Chircop said capital expenditure was also going down by Lm1 million to Lm6 million, making one wonder how the authority could continue its urban renewal projects. Indeed, it was shameful that during the current year the authority's capital spending had reached only Lm4.4 million from an allocation of Lm7.2 million.

The government's subvention to the Housing Authority would itself decline from Lm1 million to Lm500,000.

All these cuts would be affecting the weakest in society, Dr Chircop said, adding that this showed a lack of social commitment by the government. He observed that although the number of residents in areas such as Cospicua was dwindling, the number of applications for social housing was over 300, three times more than in bigger areas. The same could be said of Valletta.

Faced with such a precarious situation, one would immediately realise that priority had to be given to the three cities and Valletta. The government should set up sectoral task forces to work on just these areas so as to stem social problems.

Dr Chircop said the Housing Authority and the Malta Environment and Planning Authority needed to work more closely together, not least to enable the former to carry out its projects faster. One could see that over the past year, it was costing the authority Lm1,500 more to install each lift in government housing blocks.

Labour MP Stefan Buontempo said the Housing Authority lacked a social conscience and ideas. As demography and people's aspirations changed, the authority needed to change its activities accordingly.

The Labour government of 1996-98 had worked to develop, for the first time, a written policy on how the country's housing needs were to be tackled in future. Unfortunately this work had been shelved by the present administration.

Five years on, the government still lacked direction in this sector, to the extent that people who up to some time ago had never dreamt they would have a housing problem, now did.

The present government had also stopped the process, started by Labour, of assessing which former church land could be used for housing.

Nor was anything being done to encourage the utilisation of the 30,000 dwellings which were currently vacant. The updating of the rent laws also appeared to have stopped.

Referring to urban renewal, Dr Buontempo said this should respect historical heritage. Simply replacing old buildings with new ones did not amount to urban renewal.

He insisted that the government and the authority should not belittle the work of the former Labour government in the housing sector. It had been the Labour government that started the installation of lifts in housing blocks. And it was not true that no flats were issued for rent under Labour.

Dr Buontempo said the authority's Care and Repair Scheme, which offered help to those families who could not afford repairs to their homes was, unfortunately, not being adequately availed of due to a number of factors.

Foremost among these factors was certain manual labourers' refusal to charge VAT for their work, and some landlords' refusal to rent property to people who wanted to avail themselves of funding from the authority's schemes. Clearly, it had to be made possible for more people to avail themselves of this scheme, possibly through the reintroduction of the list of approved manual workers.

There was also the need to have more schemes to make homes more accessible to the elderly and thus avoid them having to move from their residence.

The Slum Clearance Agency, first proposed over four years ago, had not yet been set up, Dr Buontempo concluded.

Dr Josè Herrera (MLP) observed that the Housing Authority's projected capital expenditure for 2001-02 was of Lm7 million, but the actual expenditure had only been around Lm4.4 million. This meant the government had not lived up to its promises by spending the amount estimated.

The number of vacant premises was on the increase. The government should try to remedy this, but not by issuing requisition orders as used to be the case before 1987. Where there was property of unknown ownership, or where there were too many interested parties, the government should introduce a system of compensation for such premises.

Labour MP Marie Louise Coleiro said not all those who deserved assistance got it, because there were parameters that cut certain people off.

A single parent with three children living on social assistance and getting maximum authority subsidy on rent would still be left with having to pay Lm80 a month, half her income. And an elderly couple living on the national minimum pension, which was lower than the minimum wage, but who owned their home and had managed to save Lm4,000 over the years, could not access the authority's scheme because their assets were over the limit.

Between 2000 and 2003 the authority had carried out 2,135 inspections, but it had passed only 54 units to the Social Housing Department to rent out. This meant that only 2.5 per cent of people who were inspected had been served.

The general social housing policy, she said, was falling short of serving people who were in real need.

Ms Coleiro suggested private-public partnerships to be set up for the installation of lifts. If contractors installed lifts it would be in their interest to have a maintenance agreement, she said.