Bring in the old

The Housing Authority, together with the minister responsible for housing, will today launch an initiative to try and buy homes in urban cores. A sum of Lm3 million has been dedicated to this, and we hope to leave the scheme open for one year, depending, of course, on the quantity and quality of housing offered.

Although the preference is to buy older housing which meets our clients' needs, is affordable to them and which is financially viable to rehabilitate, we will also consider newer housing developments as we are most in need of housing in areas where such properties are located. Understandably, people on lower income find it easier for a host of reasons to live in, say, Msida, Valletta and Hamrun than they do in Qawra and Bugibba, to take two examples of newer towns, not least because of transport issues and closeness to familial and social contacts and support networks.

In the coming years, the Housing Authority will have to concentrate as much on urban renewal as on its current primary core activity, newly- built housing, under the new and very much in demand shared-ownership system. The reasons behind this are largely practical ones as the land supplied to us by the Joint Office should last another seven years, at most. Hence, planning to find alternative sites must start now. It also makes eminent environmental sense for the Housing Authority, as an important arm of the government, to promote the use of and utilise current empty housing rather than build new units, although, of course, one cannot do as was done in the past and take housing away from private owners for not always clear public gain.

Housing, like everything else in life, has to be paid for, and it is ultimately the government and the taxpayer, who funds government activity, who will decide how much should be invested in housing and how much help people should get and for how long.

We also hope to boost this Lm3 million through structural funds from the EU, which will be available for the first time to us as of 2007, provided our application succeeds in meeting the set criteria.

We hope to use the Lm3 million sum to buy empty property but we will still need more funds for the rehabilitation of such properties. Thus, funds from another source will be sorely needed anyway if this initiative succeeds in attracting enough property.

Clearly, the biggest challenge to the success of this initiative is the current value of property (some would say the over-value of apartments in particular).

While there are no disincentives to have or to hoard extra property, most prefer to sit on it knowing its value is always increasing, even though we hear that rental returns are diminishing!

We are now being told prices are stable. There may be another increase in prices, but then prices will have to, at best, level off, and the very many who have made a killing out of house price spirals will have to look elsewhere for their investments and less quick bucks.

The 1995 census data, which is the last we have, tells us we have 35,273 empty homes, a massive 23 per cent of all our property, although 13,000 of these are used in summer and 22,756 are permanently vacant. If we look at the urban cores (where summer homes are unlikely!) and the older housing, which interests the Housing Authority, the figures speak for themselves: 5,000 empty homes in Valletta and The Three Cities and 4,429 in Hamrun, Qormi and Birkirkara.

House condition is really a key issue in vacant homes. A good 24 per cent of vacant houses are newly built, and another 50 per cent are well maintained.

Twenty per cent need maintenance and six per cent are dilapidated, which translates into 2,296 houses which are an eyesore, a danger or more spread around our islands, and mostly in our urban cores and which need urgent attention.

Hopefully, this initiative will succeed in three main ways. It will start the process by which the Housing Authority becomes a lead provider of urban renewal projects. It will help to lessen the quantity of substandard housing and also go a small way towards boosting our supply of both housing for shared ownership and housing for rent.

Ms Micallef is chairman of the Housing Authority.