116 social housing units allocated last year, 286 applications were received

The acute shortage of social housing units within the government’s stock of properties has meant that last year only one out of every 27 applicants on the waiting list was successful. 

In 2018, the Housing Authority allocated 116 properties, which was less than half the number of social housing applications received during this period – which totalled 286. 

Looking at the bigger picture, however, the situation is grimmer as the overall number of pending applications has reached 3,172 – 27 times the number of units allocated last year.

Meanwhile, schemes launched in 2018 in a bid to increase the government’s stock of properties for those in need had modest success. 

One of these incentives was to encourage elderly people who had moved to retirement homes to return their government property to the authority in return for receiving a 20 per cent increase in their pension. However, this measure only yielded 14 properties.

In 2018, a separate scheme was launched where owners of vacant private properties would receive a grant to restore them, in return for hiring out the same dwelling to the Housing Authority for a 10-year period. Only 29 applications were filed, of which 10 were...