Relative poverty in the EU : a focus on social housing in Malta

Abstract

Poverty is a problem that every country must constantly address, even though situations of poverty are different from one country to another. While developing countries face the most common form of poverty, known as absolute poverty, meaning lack of shelter, food and water, developed countries like Malta and the rest of the European Union face what is known as relative poverty. Relative poverty refers to poverty in terms of the least privileged demographic of a country, and can refer to many aspects such as education level, situations and material deprivation among others. However, relative poverty is also made up of struggles to own decent housing, with decent living conditions. All governments face the difficulty to ensure that all citizens have access to such forms of housing, even to the most financially deprived demographics of a country. This is done through what is known as social housing, which can also be described as affordable housing provided by governments through subsidies, to ensure that citizens not affording to purchase or rent property at current prices are given the aid required by authorities to provide them the right to shelter.

Social housing must be provided by all national governments in every country, in particular developed countries that have in their best interests to ensure that no people end up homeless, not only for economic reasons but most importantly for morale reasons. Therefore, this dissertation will be delving into the Maltese scene by analysing the poverty and social housing situations in Malta, and how Maltese governments have attacked these problems. This will be mainly done through an analysis of all available literature and secondary data, as well as a quantitative and qualitative analysis of Malta’s past five national budgets, with the aim of assessing areas that governments have addressed and also areas which have not been given the importance needed, with the hope of hitting upon unaddressed areas or solutions that could possibly solve the issues that Malta has been facing in recent years with regards to affordable housing.