The enforcement arm of the Housing Authority is to be strengthened to focus more on cutting down abuse, Social Accommodation Minister Roderick Galdes said on Wednesday.

Speaking during the debate on the estimates covering his ministry, Galdes said that no abuse will be tolerated at any time.

One could not, for example, rent his housing authority property to tourists, lie about his income or expect to never pay rent.

Budget allocations for housing have grown from €2.47 million in 2012 to €28 million this year, he said. Another €110 million is being used to build 1,700 new apartments.

Between 2013 and 2021, the authority would have invested €82 million, not including investment in capital projects.

Moreover, the waiting list for social housing was now at its lowest level in 20 years, with a list of around 3,000 applicants whittled down to around 700.

Some applicants for housing schemes had to be turned down because it was clear they would never be able to meet the required repayments, he said.

Rent laws

Turning to rent legislation, Galdes said 26,000 people had registered property rentals, giving families in such housing the opportunity to benefit from government subsidies.

Labour MP Ian Castaldi Paris said the Housing Authority now appealed not just to people who could not afford their property, but also to others in different circumstances.

He mentioned a range of housing schemes. Among them are a co-ownership scheme that allows individuals to become homeowners by co-purchasing a property together with the authority, while the other gives people a roof over their head by allowing the authority to rent private properties to then sub-let to people in need.

Another scheme, he said, allowed individuals to buy a property by covering the 10% down payment needed to do so.

Call for living income

Earlier, Nationalist MP Ivan Bartolo called for a living income which would ensure a decent living for all.  However, this was not the sole solution to overcoming poverty and exclusion as this required various and specific interventions, he said.

Bartolo said that all stakeholders had to coordinate among themselves better, as despite efforts to defeat poverty, those at the lowest levels were not being reached.

He noted that the poorest among the poor - the homeless - were not factored into data, as they could not participate in surveys.

The average cost of building a property has gone up by as much as 78 per cent, Bartolo said.

He called for a revision of the national strategy for poverty reduction drawn up in 2014, which, he said was ineffective. This, he said, should take account of the actual situation also addressing people who were vulnerable.

Nationalist MP Claudette Buttigieg called for the Home Assist Scheme to be tweaked, saying it did not make sense that the property to be bought had to be finished and with a value not exceeding €140,000.

This, she said, made it practically impossible for anyone to benefit from this scheme as property prices were not decreasing. The COVID-19 crisis had instead brought overpriced properties down to the market price, she said. 

Independent MP Marlene Farrugia said that the country had reached a level of economic development to allow it, should it truly want it, to ensure nobody was homeless or in need of social accommodation.

She noted that the only way some MPs could stomach the golden passports IIP scheme when it had been proposed was because then Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had promised this would earn the government millions and that the first €50 million would be spent on a major project of housing units which would be the start of addressing the problem.

Farrugia said that if the previous systems of providing social housing did not succeed, one should try to change the model. One such way, she suggested, could be to ask developers to provide land for a number of apartments for social housing purposes.

Another option was to buy property from those who wanted to sell especially during these difficult times. A Labour government had, and still has, the opportunity to make a difference but it should drop dragging its feet, Farrugia said.