In Marsa’s old town a landlord packs a weathered smoking pipe with scented tobacco as he collects rent from the tenants of his rundown apartment block.

The five desolate flats are inhabited solely by Eritrean and Somali migrants, who scratch what little money they have together to make ends meet.

Each two-bedroom apartment shelters as many as nine migrants who take turns sleeping on a bed, sofa or the floor.

Walking up the narrow stairwell, the landlord explains that similar living arrangements are now a common sight across Marsa, the town with the highest concentration of migrant residents on the island.

“This used to be a family building. Not anymore. Now more and more people are opting to raise families elsewhere,” he said through a cloud of cherry tobacco smoke.

After rent collection the landlord walks to an abandoned garden a few streets away. Once the scene of innocent childhood games, the park is now littered with empty bottles of cooking wine and cigarette butts. The remnants of a makeshift bed also lay scattered on a nearby bench.

These migrants should be more evenly spread out, not just across the EU but across the island too

“You can tell a town by its public spaces. These places are sad and so too is Marsa,” he said.

The garden and several of the town’s squares and pedestrian walkways, have become the unwitting haunts of frustrated migrants who inhabit the Albert Town Open Centre.

Opened in 2007, the centre is home to 400 migrants. However, some 1,200 make use of its facilities on a daily basis.

Ghanaian-Maltese Ahmed Bugri is pastor and coordinator of the infamous centre. It was not meant to integrate migrants into the Marsa area, he said.

“Initially the people of Marsa resented the idea of an open centre in their neighbourhood,” he said, pointing to the popular thinking that integration of foreigners poses a threat to local identity.

Marsa Mayor Francis Debono said he felt almost powerless against the rising tide of migrants whom he described as “visibly depressed”.

Mayor for the past 20 years, save for a brief hiatus some eight years ago, Mr Debono has seen the island’s migrant problem develop from the very beginning.

“I was mayor at the birth of the migrant situation. I’ve seen it slowly take over our town. There has been little I could do,” he said, adding that integration programmes initiated by the council had proven to be too little too late for the throngs of frustrated Sub-Saharan men.

“We were abandoned by previous governments. They offered little support for our overwhelmed council resources. The result has been a heavy culture shift in Marsa,” he said.

The shift saw several long standing enterprises in the area replaced by “migrant businesses”, such as internet cafes, grocers who stock African staples and several bars with less than savoury backroom activities.

Despite the influx, Mr Debono believes a solution could lie in a burden sharing system across the whole island.

“These migrants should be more evenly spread out, not just across the EU but across the island too. A few localities can’t deal with this alone,” he said, pointing to the “success stories” of integration schemes in other localities.

This used to be a family building. Not anymore. Now more and more people are opting to raise families elsewhere

One such success occurred in Balzan, where some 300 migrants form an integral part of the local community.

Balzan Mayor John Zammit Montebello said the town had a long history of migrant integration. Having first opened its doors to a group of Iraqi refugees during the Gulf War, the town now boasts one of the island’s most ambitious integration incentives.

The Good Shepherd Convent near the town’s central square operates Balzan’s open centre in collaboration with the local council and the Government.

“It’s a give and take. Of course some xenophobia exists, but that will always be there. On the whole it is clear that the migrants here form part of our community,” Dr Zammit Montebello said.

The majority of the migrants in Balzan are family units as opposed to the single males housed at the Marsa Open Centre. Dr Zammit Montebello believes this was one of the main factors contributing to the town’s success.

“You can’t compare Marsa to Balzan, they are too different. The solution for Malta, however, definitely lies in sharing migrants across the whole island. This will help our fast changing society,” he said.