Page 25 - Housing & Poverty In Malta With A Focus On The Southern Harbour Region

8. Policy Suggestions

In the light of the findings of the foregoing sections, it is very clear that the current trends
are not going to be sustainable in the long run and are going to create problems of
regional depression, poverty and squalor, lack of opportunities for social mobility and
ultimately increasing crime.

Vacant housing units represent dead and deteriorating capital, whereas the land on which
they are built is appreciating only because of “economic bubble” conditions. This is
evident from informal debt statistics that the IRISS has access to, although no official data
exists therefor. Allocating more rural space for residential development is therefore a
perverse policy, and this is even more evident when the statistics pertaining to the
increasing stock of vacant housing is perused.

Policies addressing the revamping and re-use of vacant housing as well as the
regeneration of traditional village cores should, in this milieu, be formulated, and the
necessary actions to see to their implementation should be taken. This is a responsibility
that invariably falls on the central governing authorities, their agencies and authorities.

A coherent set of objectives has never been formulated by the Maltese Government in
this respect. First, a ranking of objectives taking into account the wider socio-economic
and political background has to be set. Focusing narrowly on the sociological, political or
economic aspect alone is a precept that bodes ill and is, in all probability, conducive to
policies that are doomed to fail.

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