With an investment of €300,000, two blocks of social housing in Ta’ Ramija in Siġġiewi are being regenerated. This was announced by the Minister for Social Accommodation Roderick Galdes who explained that 50 families will be benefiting from this investment.
“The housing estates are part of the social and architectural fabric of a town or village and their appearance must pay tribute to the surrounding neighbourhood. We strongly believe that we should never underestimate the visual impact of housing estates on our towns and villages and our commitment is to ensure that disadvantaged or marginalised areas are not created in our urban centres.”
Minister Roderick Galdes added that this project for the regeneration of social housing blocks in Siġġiewi is part of a larger project that will translate into the maintenance and improvement of all housing estates in Malta. The investment this year reached €2.6 million, which 500 families will have benefited from.
“This is because for us there are no first or second class tenants, we are working hard to ensure that everyone living in a housing estate has a substantial improvement in their quality of life and this starts with a proper intervention on these buildings.”
He reminded that parallel with the realisation of the vision that the Government has for the housing sector in Malta, the work against the abuse of social housing has also intensified. This is to ensure that these apartments go to people who are really in need.
“We will never accept all this work we are doing to help those in need to be ruined by abuse.”
From his end, CEO of the Housing Authority Leonid McKay expressed satisfaction at the work of the Authority regarding regeneration projects providing a better quality of life for the residents.
He explained that together with the Ministry for Social Accommodation, every effort is being made to create incentives to increase the stock of social housing while maintaining the current stock.
“The stock of social housing increases not only by building new blocks but also by efficiently tackling abuse, in fact a few days ago we talked about a case of blatant abuse where government property was being used for tourism purposes”, said McKay.
He concluded that over the past three years, the Housing Authority has carried out more than 4,400 routine inspections to address this abuse.