Housing minister calls for emphasis on social inclusion

Housing Minister Dolores Cristina told Parliament on Tuesday that the Housing Authority received 58 requests for social accommodation every month insisting that the emphasis had to be on social inclusion.

Winding up the debate on the budgetary estimates of the authority, Mrs Cristina said that these requests were the result of changes in lifestyle, family and accommodation cultures. Social problems and the needs of an ageing population increased the onus on the authority which had to be more sensitive to people’s needs.

The minister said she was not happy with some of the schemes currently administered by the authority and direction had been given on reducing bureaucracy. The Authority had published a 20-point strategy which included the regeneration of housing estates in collaboration with local councils and community centres.

She said that new schemes such as the Nirranġa d-dar tiegħi (Upgrading my house scheme) aimed at improving residences of elderly and people with special needs.

The Housing Authority would take action to collect rents which had been overdue without creating unnecessary burdens. It would also use its premises in Msida to set up a centre similar to the Aċċess in Cottonera which could provide services to the community and NGOs.

Minister Cristina accused the opposition of criticising but failing to come up with new policies. The private partnership scheme had failed because developers wanted to use the scheme to be given permission to build on land outside development zones.

Plans for private-public partnership pilot projects in Birkirkara and Msida were ready and would be increasing the housing stock for the Authority. It would issue a call for property owners who wanted to rent apartments to the authority which in turn would use them for social housing purposes. The housing market had changed, she said, and hoped this scheme would give the desired results.

The authority would give priority to 550 of the 2,100 applications for social accommodation. Applicants were either living in sub-standard dwellings, or were social cases, homeless people and persons with special needs. The other 1,500 applications were cases not directly linked to housing needs.

Mrs Cristina said some schemes being brought back included Issir Sid Darek (Own Your Home) but with different conditions. Past abuses had included instances when senior citizens rushed to buy their homes but then soon ended up in old people’s homes.

Research being undertaken on housing estates would seek to understand who was living in government accommodation and what sort of help was really needed. The Housing Authority sought to help its tenants towards semi-independent living, and was using EU funds to construct energy-saving units. Its five-to-10-year action plan would work on the needs of the most vulnerable tenants in housing and other social aspects.

Help would also be given to people who found it difficult to integrate in their new residences. To this end the authority was committed to better work practices and training among its staff.

It was patently untrue to allege that 1,300 applications had been struck off simply for not having replied to correspondence sent to them. Applications were struck off for much more serious reasons.

Mrs Cristina admitted that true stories had been heard of people who could have been treated more sensitively, but some reports did not say everything. She agreed that where real problems existed, such as family tragedy, the authority should get to work on such cases immediately.

It was gratifying to hear that the Housing Authority had never been so transparent as in recent years. Political creeds did not come into the equation because all applicants for help were vulnerable and in need. Dr Jean Pierre Farrugia (PN) was right to say that the points system did not make sense sometimes, but the authority had to have benchmarks. People in whose cases the system did not make sense invariably became priorities.The authority must look at fine-tuning its modus operandi in order to achieve ever-better service.

Mrs Cristina said local councils were happy with the two schemes in conjunction with the authority, through which all government-owned apartment blocks would be refurbished within six years. The government believed in decentralisation and would continue to devolve powers and responsibilities to local councils.

To comments by Stafan Buontempo (PL) that the scheme would involve only five blocks in Senglea, she said the list showed Valletta at the top with 23 blocks, with Żejtun, Żebbuġ, Sta Luċija and Qormi high up because the authority was ready to cooperate with any local council willing to do the spadework. There was a maximum fund of €75,000 for each locality.

Requisition orders had once amounted to 53,000 but were now down to 233, twenty of which did not involve residences. The authority would not lift any such order until it was sure residents would have another roof over their heads.

Mrs Cristina said that following the recent revision of the 70-year-old rent laws some things still needed fine-tuning because no-one could hope for an easy or one-time solution, but at least justice had been done to long-suffering owners.

It was not true that the authority would have rented out only 60 residences by the end of the year. Several units would become available by then. Some could still be put on sale but with different conditions than previously.

Within the next few weeks the Housing Authority would announce details of public-private partnership schemes in various scenarios for the development of land owned by the private sector.

The Land Department would soon be relinquishing non-new residences to the authority. In Cottonera alone the residents of more than 30 residences would be able to consider purchase.

Mrs Cristina agreed with Mr Roderick Galdes (PL) that it was a source of national pride that 73 per cent of residences were owned by their occupants.

The Shared Ownership Scheme had been one of the most popular and successful ever. It had started with 19 women victims of domestic violence, and spread out to hundreds of young couples who would otherwise never have afforded to buy their homes from the private sector.

It was all too obvious that scenarios had changed, and with them the systems. Now the authority was considering how to rent vacant private stock, thereby helping to partly solve two problems at once. But it must be very careful to maintain complete transparency.

Mrs Cristina said she could see a housing authority with a clear vision of where it wanted to go, with a strongly-committed workforce.

It must not only be sensitive but also sensible, with streamlined schemes and application systems, good administration and efficiency.

Nationalist MPs Ċensu Galea, David Agius, Jean Pierre Farrugia and Stephen Spiteri also contributed to the debate.