Malta severely unprepared to treat homelessness, experts say

Maltese laws do not favour the vulnerable and Malta’s economic growth has put several people at risk of homelessness, experts say. 

At a seminar in memory of the late Charles Miceli, the social justice warrior who passed away last October, experts from various fields presented homelessness as a rampant and invisible malady that Malta is severely unprepared for.

“Irrespective of how one intends to measure homelessness, the results depend on how we define it. A narrow definition of it, for example, would limit the possibilities of how to help vulnerable individuals,” said Ann Marie Cutajar, a graduate from the Faculty of Social Wellbeing.

She added that Malta lacks a legal definition of homelessness and, by extension, adequate statistics that show how many homeless people are in Malta.

According to figures tabled in Parliament in October 2018, 27 people were reported sleeping outdoors between 2013 and last August. However, the experts agreed this did not reflect the reality of homelessness as YMCA Valletta alone reported that 191 people regularly used their shelters in 2018.

The seminar, Homelessness: The Hidden Scandal, was organised by the Faculty of Health Sciences, the Faculty of Social Wellbeing, YMCA Valletta and Caritas Malta at Verdala Palace in Buskett. The groups presented their research on homelessness.

Cutajar said that several factors enhance the possibility of homelessness, mainly Malta’s economic growth in tandem with the lack of housing affordability, lack of assistance from banks, rise in price of rent accommodation and lack of social care. 

While the right to adequate housing is recognised as a fundamental right by the International Human Rights Law, housing as a right still remains vague under the Maltese legal order, Cutajar explained. International law does not automatically become an act of domestic law.

The UN goes further as to define adequate housing as not just a roof over one’s head but as a dignifying shelter that enables privacy and access to amenities.

“In Malta, inadequate housing and insecure housing is the most common kind of homelessness,” Cutajar said, adding that available local statistics on homeless individuals do not even account for people living in cars, squatting, or living in several shelters around Malta. 

“Social care is just as important as physical care,” Cutajar said, adding that her findings suggested that the main causes of homelessness are domestic violence, unhealthy or dysfunctional relationships, debt, addictive behaviour, mental health conditions, past incarceration, and poverty.

Causing discomfort

Dean of the Faculty of Social Wellbeing Andrew Azzopardi said that this seminar on homelessness is a clear statement of intent, that Malta shouldn’t allow homelessness to happen. “We need to create a discomfort to push for action in this regard,” he said.

Caritas Malta Director Anthony Gatt paid a moving tribute to the late Charles Miceli, saying that up until his death he was fighting for the regularisation of the rental market.  

Miceli had an active role in the Foundation Dar Papa Frangisku up until his death, acting as a board member on the anti-poverty forum. 

Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Roberta Sammut, said that the word ‘scandal’ was chosen as part of the seminar’s title not to affront policymakers but to cause discomfort. “This is an issue that puts us all to shame and we have to acknowledge it as reality,” she said. 

The seminar saw around 120 delegates from several professions, including the Housing Authority.