A repairing authority

Not enough people are perhaps aware of the fact that today the Housing Authority repairs or extends repair grants to many more households than it builds.

We build about 150 to 200 new houses a year, depending on the issue of permits and on the availability of building sites, but repairs are carried out in about 500 homes every year. This is mostly done via repair grants but also, now increasingly, through what is known as Care and Repair, where we carry out the repairs ourselves in some of Malta's worst housing for the benefit of the most vulnerable families.

Last year Lm610,000 were spent on repair in 479 homes, up substantially from Lm386,000 spent on repairing homes in 2000 and a total change from the handful of repair grants extended when the present board started its work in 1998. Additionally, 85 families received disability grants to adapt their homes to their needs, up substantially from the 37 who received such a grant in 2000. Scores more households every year benefit from lifts in their homes.

Those who say the private rental market is not booming and that no use is being made of existing housing should look more closely at our rent allowances where we help people to pay their rent, in private sector lets. There were 156 families who benefited in 2000. Last year, 733 families received grants to help them pay rent.

On these three schemes alone - repair grants, grants to families with disability and rent allowances - the Housing Authority processed and paid out a total of Lm888,465, up from Lm449,624 in 2000. The number of families who benefited has also doubled in five years, up to 1,297 families last year, from 619 families in 2000.

Over the past five years, 5,582 families benefited from one of these three schemes and a total of Lm4.1 million were spent. This excludes the average of 150 families a year who are allocated a newly-built home by the Housing Authority, nowadays under shared ownership. These units are found all over Malta but particularly in Pembroke, Mtarfa, Birkirkara and Naxxar. There are then those who benefit from urban renewal projects, which are self evident in Msida, Valletta, Floriana and the Cottonera.

This is, and will continue to be, a very different Housing Authority to the one inherited.

An initiative has also been launched to try and buy empty property. A publicity campaign will soon start on PBS to encourage more owners to sell their property to us. Many people own a small, inexpensive property somewhere which is not being used but which the Housing Authority badly needs as our issues for sale are three times oversubscribed, and there are at least 500 families on a waiting list of 3,000 who need help urgently.

We are not only talking about buying blocks of flats (though we may do that too). We are particularly interested in buying and converting small houses in areas that are perhaps not as popular as others but which would be suitable for lower income families, many of whom are very much smaller than they were in the past and also include a substantial number of older and single people, an increasing demographic trend we may be ignoring at our own peril.

We also hope to obtain funds from the EU to help us with projects of urban renewal, projects that are costly to administer and to complete because of a range of issues varying from re-housing sometimes unwilling evictees to the constraints of working in some of Malta's narrowest streets and alleys. They are funds which, in any case, should help us strengthen our role as a repairing authority.

Ms Micallef is chairman of the Housing Authority.