One in every eight social housing applicants hail from Paola or St Paul’s Bay. This information emerged from a recent parliamentary question by Opposition MP Bernice Bonello to Social Housing Minister Roderick Galdes.

It transpires, that there are presently 1,640 applicants who are seeking social housing, presumably as they do not have the means to rent or buy a property at commercial rates.

The highest number of applicants were listed as being from Paola (109), followed by St Paul’s Bay (92), Birkirkara (86), Zejtun (73) and Zabbar (68). On the other hand, the lowest number of applicants hail from Gozo whereby they 33 of whom half are located in Victoria and Zebbug.

Judging by the reply given in a separate parliamentary question last February, there have been little inroads to cut down the waiting lists as the total back then was 1,553.

Social housing has made ‘a comeback’ in recent years in the wake of the rapid population increase which resulted in a spike in rental prices as well as the cost to buy a property. While the average property price size shrunk, prices kept soaring nonetheless. Moreover, a significant stock of the vacant property is being rented out the third country nationals, who are joining forces to be able to afford the monthly rent. In turn, this is pricing out prospective Maltese tenants.

Earlier this year, a social housing project made the headlines for the wrong reasons after a ruling into claims of electoral fraud in the run up to the European and council elections.

The court found that 99 individuals had changed their residential addresses to the unfinished housing site without actually living there. This situation raised concerns about “ghost voters” being registered at the location, possibly as part of an effort to influence upcoming local elections. Following this discovery, the court ordered the Electoral Commission to remove these registrations, with several magistrates ruling that the individuals involved had been manipulated into changing their addresses.