Page 26 - Housing & Poverty In Malta With A Focus On The Southern Harbour Region

Incentives to shift to the use of the currently-vacant housing stock should also be put in
place. The policy options in this area are quite numerous. They range from taxing
residential developments using specific mechanisms (e.g. taxing the third house owned
by a family onwards) and using the money thus collected to subsidise the upgrading costs
of old-housing stock, all the way to withholding building permits in rural areas altogether.

Such policies need to make sure that they are perceived as being as neutral as possible to
the interests of the majority of the electorate. This should be ensured because Malta’s
adversarial politics will result in the defeat of the good policies envisaged by the party in
Government at the next elections. Such has often been the case, and will probably
continue to be in the coming years.

Furthermore, the political, sociological and economic aspects have to be interweaved and
taken into account as though they constituted a single, unified discipline. The Southern
Harbour Region’s decline is multicausal. Some causes are economic, some are political
and others are sociological. This is paramount in determining the policy mix. Incentives
to relocate part of the services industry closer to the Southern Region Harbour could
prove effective in halting the social decline in the said region, and by implication this
would stop the stock of vacant housing from progressing on its upward trend and would
also slow down or halt entirely the transformation of the same Region into a ghetto.
Incentives, here, should not necessarily be pecuniary. If the historical sites available in the
indicated area are availed of more prolifically, the private sector could be goaded to
relocate some of its operations there of its own accord, without actually having to be
enticed by the provision of subsidies in cash or in kind. What is more, the vacant housing
stock pre-dating a benchmark year could be demolished with new housing units being
erected in their stead. Such new housing units should be planned in such a way as to
satisfy the needs and wants of the new generation of Maltese people while keeping the
authentic look and feel of the Region.

Vacant housing in the Southern Harbour Region could also be purchased by government
and rented under the category of social housing. The supply of government housing,
however, should not be seen as a potential for the eventual emergence of a ghetto or a
slum area as this would be self-defeating.

Lastly, the overall macroeconomic policy package should be devised in such a way so as
to improve the earnings potential of households in gainful employment in the region and
also encourage self-help and education programmes for those out of gainful occupation.
A mismanagement of economic policies does not maximise wealth creation and accretion
and it militates against the positive effects that decent homes could generate on the
healthy development of the individual.

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