Page 6 - Housing & Poverty In Malta With A Focus On The Southern Harbour Region

depreciating consumer durable good needing maintenance and associated works. It is
sometimes conceived as an essential social good worthy of being included in with the
state’s list of public or merit goods, and at others something to be left entirely to the
market’s invisible hand. Since the definitional issue of housing will determine, in part, the
policy recommendations that an analysis is likely to come up with, it is usually important
to define housing meticulously. However, since for the purposes of this paper, the issue
merits treatment holistically, the generic term housing shall be adopted and will take on
all the attributes ascribed to it in everyday, colloquial usage. More specific definitions will
be employed wherever the need to do so is identified within this paper.

At the outset, it might be in order to define what constitutes vacant housing and, by
1
implication, occupied housing . Even defining vacant and occupied housing has its
problems. The Maltese National Statistics Office (NSO), for example, classifies summer
2
and holiday accommodations under the heading of vacant housing units , whereas the
3
International Monetary fund (IMF) classifies summer and holiday accommodations
under the heading occupied housing units. The definition that has been found to be most
appropriate for this paper is that used by the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB
defines a vacant dwelling in terms of the fact that it is not occupied or let by its owners:
“Dwellings regularly used during some seasons or during holiday periods are considered
as non-vacant. New dwellings not yet let / occupied are considered vacant. All non-vacant
dwellings are, by definition, occupied. The vacancy rate is calculated by taking the share
4
of vacant dwellings in the total stock of dwellings” . However, because the data that is
required for this paper comes from the NSO, it does not make sense to adopt one
definition and be compelled to use another, so the definitions of the NSO have to be
adopted for practical reasons, even though this is not ideal.

The literature surveyed in coming up with this paper identifies two kinds of homelessness,
these being visible homelessness and invisible homelessness. The former is defined as
that type of homelessness whereby people have literally no roof above their heads and
often end up roaming the streets frittering away their time and hoping that providence
will be favourable enough to supply them with yet another day’s essentials. The latter
type of homelessness, despite being, as its name suggests, less conspicuous, is still highly
problematic and it takes account of a host of housing-related aspects. Such aspects
usually cover the realms of affordability, adequacy, protection, security of tenure,
suitability, independent living, privacy and community-related issues.

This study covers only two of these housing aspects: affordability and adequacy.

1 Occupied housing may be defined as the total stock of housing minus the vacant stock of housing.
Symbolically, if we let C denote occupied housing and V stand for the vacant stock, V = 1 - C .
2 “National Accounts: Sources and Methods” by the NSO (2000)
3 “Compilation Guide on Financial Soundness Indicators Draft” by the IMF Chapter 9 (March 2003)
4 “Statistics on EU Housing Markets” by the WGGES: ECB (July 2003).

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