The Valletta apartment is in a sorry state. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

Cracked steps littered with fallen stone from crumbling walls lead to the battered metal door of a four-roomed Valletta apartment housing a family of seven.

Inside, garbage bags act as windowpanes and a stained, transparent curtain closes off the bedroom where the parents and five children sleep on three beds and a cot.

To the left, a narrow corridor crossed by washing lines leads to a room where two old, dirty mattresses with exposed springs rest against the wall.

“We used to sleep on them before the priest gave us other mattresses. I’m 40 and this is the scariest place I’ve ever seen,” says Simon* as his wife Mary* carries a two-year-old boy, their youngest son.

“The building is falling to bits. We are living in poverty… someone needs to take notice of people like us.”

Simon’s is one of 250 poor families across Malta being followed through a three-year Wishing Others Well project run by the Millennium Chapel in Paceville.

It aims to understand what leads people to live in poverty and help them. More than 15 per cent of the population is at risk of poverty.

Fr Saviour Grima, who heads the Millennium Chapel, has visited the 250 families.

He said: “Poverty is not one issue but a lot of interlinked ones. When you go into these people’s homes, you see that some end up in poverty because they fall into depression.

“Others would have passed through some trauma or illness.”

Fr Grima believes it is time to reform social services and tackle realities that make people choose not to work.

“When you ask why they don’t work, they tell you it doesn’t pay – if they work for three months and are then told to leave, they have to wait six months to receive benefits again,” he said.

Simon is a case in point. He stopped working 18 years ago when he was fired following an accident at work.

Since then he has been registering for jobs and the family lives on €140 a week, as well as children’s allowance.

Simon knows his family deserves better but has no idea how to get there, he points out.

Stuck on the wall, a chart lists daily medicines for two children who suffer epileptic fits.

The doorway leads to what is used as a kitchen: a rusty cooker, a table and a few chairs with exposed foam and a fridge. The walls are covered with scribbles from top to bottom. The only luxuries are a television and kettle.

The bathroom contains a toilet and a shower stuck on the wall above a small basin.

He said: “When I start telling my children about this situation I cry in front of them. I tell them we are in a disastrous state… they see it for themselves. I don’t want them to think I don’t.

“Sometimes I borrow €20 or €30 to buy medicines. I will not allow them to be sick.”

Simon moved to his current residence more than 11 years ago after applying through the Housing Authority.

Since then the building has deteriorated. Three years ago a sewage pipe burst and filled the whole apartment with waste water.

When asked why housing was left to get in such a state, the authority said the property was privately owned “but still burdened by a requisition order”.

The family paid rent - €185 a year – to the authority as the owner had never recognised them as legal tenants.

The place was in good condition when first leased to the family, who had never maintained it or applied for schemes to fund maintenance, the authority said.

*Names have been changed.