Gibraltar Matters

Hostels, Halfway-Houses and the Homeless of Gibraltar

A summer Sunday, and while most of Gibraltar is on one beach or other, a handful of men and a couple of women trudge their few possessions out of the Retreat Centre. By the time this piece is published, they will have been evicted from this shelter and onto the streets of Gibraltar. With any luck, some of them may have somewhere to go – the Emile Hostel perhaps, or the Sunrise Motel. Some will end up in a crumbling squat along with local rats and cockroaches, but even this may provide some sense of security rather than sleeping in an alley or doorway where the threat of arrest or assault becomes tangible during the long hours of night.

But, according to Government, Gibraltar has done its bit. The Retreat Centre was made available during the pandemic, temporarily. The street homeless there were told it was temporary. They were fed and watered, given attention, given a clean bed, and in the sardonic words of the GBC report: they even had use of a communal room with TV. No doubt they were grateful for a time. They were given three weeks’ notice to leave – as if anyone without an income could raise a deposit on a local private rented bedsit or studio flat in that time. What it appears no-one (and by that, I mean no-one in Government) has done, is found a way for these persons to access a home once the temporary shelter had to come to an end.

I’m pausing here to make the distinction between a hostel, a halfway-house and a home. A hostel is somewhere for someone, usually travellers, to stay on a temporary basis. The way hostels are run, the ‘roof over the head’ they provide, the lack of personal space, the lack of permanence and security means they are not homes. A homeless person in a hostel is still, broadly speaking, homeless.

A halfway-house, by its very name, is neither here nor there. It provides shelter, and depending on how it is structured and operates and on the way that other forms of support for its residents interact with the provision of a tenancy, it can be a great step from some difficult situations into mainstream housing. A halfway house often works very well to support the full reintegration into society of people recovering from substance abuse or leaving hospital after a bout of mental illness or rehabilitating former offenders. But a halfway house is not a solution to inability to find affordable and appropriate housing. And it is not a real home, because it is not stable, nor secure. A homeless person in a halfway house, is still, broadly speaking, homeless.

The news that Government was again evicting its homeless to return to the streets was bound to cause a flurry of outrage. The GSD waded in – quite rightly so – to ask for clarity in relation for the provision of emergency housing for homeless men. Not sure why they stopped at ‘homeless men’ although they did bring to the public attention the fact that there were homeless women at the Retreat Centre too, something the Government had conveniently glossed over. But homelessness is complex and it’s easier for politicians – especially those in a party that never managed to make any constructive inroads into Gibraltar’s long-standing housing crisis when it was in power – to focus on small matters that make political capital than offer multi-faceted strategies to tackle those complex issues. Especially where some of those strategies are likely to ruffle the feathers of some sections of the electorate, or party donors, or powerful lobbyists. It is the same the world over.

Action for Housing – also absolutely hitting the nail on the head – called out for transparency on the procedures for allocating homes for homeless men. There we go again – homeless men. I am puzzled. I don’t think I’m that much of a dunce, but why, I have to muse on this scorching Sunday where I am utterly unsettled at the thought that some people are trudging across town to the Motel not knowing what life will throw at them next, why is everyone suddenly talking about ‘homeless men’?

Don’t get me wrong, homelessness is awful for anyone, male, female or other. Homeless is destructive. It is divisive. It corrodes the very fabric of society. It mutes people, it makes them voiceless. Homelessness makes their lives meaningless, senseless. It creates boundaries where there should be none. It disintegrates hope. Homelessness is a scourge. It is a sickness in our society. It is the permanent pandemic caused by rampant capitalist systems where governments allow free market forces to rule but tinker with market forces enough to skew them and then find that the results are unacceptable suffering for too many people but that any treatments are politically unpalatable. But why in Gibraltar has the conversation turned to homeless men instead of homelessness? Surely homelessness is the reason for there being homeless men, among homeless others?

Of course, focusing the conversation on the small is a useful way of distracting public eyes from the big picture. A flurry of outrage, a fluttering of public exchanges, a fiery reaction on social media on a specific point all fizzle out as quickly as a New Year’s Eve firework. One blaze and then quickly wiped from the memory.

Instead, we should be forcing Government to talk about the big picture. We should be obliging those with the reins of power in their hands and authorised to make decisions on the people’s behalf to look the real, fundamental causes of homelessness square in the face and tell us what they are going to do to make sure that the homeless find homes, and that no-one is ever made homeless again.

Of course no-one wants to talk about homelessness in its fullest sense. Because if we do, we have to acknowledge the sheer disaster that is our ‘housing system’. Because by lifting the lid on one problem, we have to stir the cooking pot of other problems. Let’s speak plainly. Dealing with homelessness means responding to encroaching poverty, increasing social divisions, a rampaging property market that does not provide for all, dealing with disability, disease, addictions, divorce, changes in family formations, changing population trends, immigration, racism, low wages, unemployment, low pension and low welfare payments, rental costs, capped rents, building costs, land use, land costs…

More than that, we have to ask some hard questions about ourselves as a society. Are we the generous Gibraltarians we like to think we are? Are we welcoming? Are we caring? Putting anyone out on the street on a Sunday, when most places such as charities and cafes are closed, is hardly the best way to advertise our social generosity.

Assuming that Gibraltarians are no longer willing to be taken advantage of by the least advantaged people in our community is laughable. Gibraltarians, I dare to say, are mightily unwilling to be taken advantage of by hugely wealthy individuals driving up the prices of property, extracting wealth from our workforce and spending the profits they reap in other parts of the world. Gibraltarians are pretty fed up of wealthy and powerful individuals that are perceived to be ‘creaming’ the system, not necessarily doing anything untoward, but ensuring that advantages point their own way and not to the way of the community at large. Gibraltarians are not blind to the huge disparities that have grown between the haves and have nots. And most of us still tend to favour helping the have nots.

So let’s stop tinkering with the frilly edges of this particular hair shirt and get down to the nitty gritty. Yes, we want to know about those eleven flats, and about allocation procedures, but even more importantly, we want to know:

What is Gibraltar going to do to house its people?

What is Gibraltar going to do about its homeless?

What is Gibraltar going to do to create a system where housing comes first and people can then be helped to rebuild their lives and not the perverse upside down system we have in place at the moment?

What is Gibraltar going to do to understand the difference between rights and entitlement and eligibility?

To get the conversation going, let me throw this thought out there. Homeless people don’t want things for free; they just need somewhere reasonable to live that they can afford. Homeless people don’t demonstrate entitlement; it’s hard enough to hang on to your self-respect when you’re homeless let alone worry about what you might be ‘entitled’ to. The word ‘entitlement’ is used as a ‘bad word’, a way of Government blaming individuals for what are essentially government failings. The fact that anyone is homeless, men or otherwise, in modern, wealthy Gibraltar, is a result of failures upon failures by successive Governments. Now is the time, when we are struggling with a global pandemic, to put failures behind us and exhort Government to face up to reality and put it right.

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
Albert Einstein

Housing in Gibraltar is in crisis. Today another half dozen or more people are starting another personal crisis. It is time to face the sickness of our society that leads people into homelessness and work together to find the cure.

Housing Gibraltar

Over the past few weeks, I have been engaged by a number of people in remarkably interesting conversations about housing and homelessness in Gibraltar. What did strike me about these conversations was an overall lack of knowledge about homelessness in Gibraltar. As I got to thinking about why this would be the case, I was persistently drawn back to the article I wrote for The Gibraltar Chronicle on the breathtaking lack of housing vision by the current government, and successive previous governments. https://www.chronicle.gi/the-scandalous-state-of-gibraltars-housing/

This means, that as a self-governing territory, we do not have a strategy in place to make sure that everyone who lives here has a housing option that results in everyone having a home to call their own. This then leads to the fact that in Gibraltar there is no definition of homelessness, it means that people have varied interpretations of the term ‘homelessness’ and therefore there can be no meaningful public discussion of homelessness. If there is a legal definition of homelessness that is used by the Housing Department, then I welcome correction – let’s make having that public discussion as easy as possible!

So I thought that I would consider what housing means, and what, in Gibraltar, homelessness means.

Gibraltar – housing dominates the landscape and yet it is in short supply….

Let’s think of housing as a system that sits on a spectrum. At one end we have the privately owned residential property, a place of residence that is owned by an individual or a corporation. At that end of the spectrum, we have luxury villas, apartments in blocks of flats around the Rock, many owner-occupied, some owned by landlords and rented out to the people that make them their homes. These residential properties hold money, they hold wealth. For some owners, it is a tax-efficient way of investing a large sum of money which they borrow from a bank in the form of a mortgage. This is paid back over a long period of time, there are tax reliefs to be gained, the bank earns income in the form of interest on the borrowed amount, and the owner usually earns in the form of increased value of the property over time. The owner who rents out the property also earns rental income. Property ownership makes people wealthy.

There is nothing wrong with generating wealth through owning property. What becomes ethically untenable is when property is used solely as a vehicle for investing funds to make money for an individual or a corporate entity. Where a society has large numbers of empty properties and people living on the street or in overcrowded, unsanitary and inadequate conditions, then we have an ethical as well as possibly an economic problem.

Why an economic problem? Because if society benefits little from private property ownership because property taxes happen to be very low, then society’s ability to invest in the future through education, social support and health systems is inhibited. And if property is not accessible to the majority of people, then all these empty residences are tax-effective repositories for wealth to the benefit of very few and certainly not to the benefit of that society. Should this be the case? It depends on your ethical standpoint but I would suggest that in Gibraltar, where we pride ourselves on our sense of community and supporting each other, this is not an acceptable ethical stance.

Further along that housing spectrum sit the shared ownership schemes. These are interesting in that they are privately / publicly owned residential properties. Some units are fully owned privately by individuals who have had to satisfy certain residency criteria. This is not unusual in order to qualify for something that has been made accessible through a generous government subsidy. Some properties are partly owned by individuals and partly by the Government in a particular form of shared ownership agreement. Tax payers, therefore, have eased people of a certain background into home ownership as a form of property tenure, which can be beneficial for the individual. Society therefore communally pays for people to be able to make private investments, albeit with some restrictions on profiteering recently introduced after some scandal. It is a very generous scheme that benefits some individuals. The pros and cons of this can be discussed in detail in another post. But for the purposes of this article, shared ownership is a form of housing tenure in Gibraltar and part of our spectrum.

Hovering in a nearby part of the spectrum is the private rental sector. A perfectly valid form of housing tenure, renting a home from a landlord is an ideal way of living for many people. Some like the flexibility of being able to move to follow career or life opportunities. Others like the clearly-drawn contractual responsibilities on issues such as repairs. Some people have rented their homes from private landlords all their lives, and in older parts of town, for generations.

There are a couple of issues in private rentals in Gibraltar. One is affordability on many properties as rents are much too high for those on low to average incomes and setting the rents are left to the vagaries of the market and the will of the landlords. The other is the difficulties caused by the drastically capped rents of pre-war properties which have resulted in all sorts of problems both for landlords and tenants.

At the further end of the housing spectrum is social or government housing. This is the only form of housing over which the Government’s Ministry for Housing has any control. It is offered at very low rents and is poorly managed and poorly maintained. The allocation system is heavily weighted against anyone who was not born in Gibraltar or lived here a very long time and is arbitrary, with final say given to the politician at the helm rather than objectively to independent professional civil servants or even a panel of independent experts.

And at the furthest end of the housing spectrum are those with no home at all.

Let that sink in for a moment. We are a rich society. As I type these words, many Gibraltarians are enjoying their day at the beach. As sun sets, they will return to their homes, shower, eat supper, relax, watch TV, chill, think about work the next day and get on with their lives. Yet so many others have no home. They will huddle in a rancid squat tonight and stuff holes in the walls with newspapers to stop the rats coming in. Tomorrow they’ll find a way to beg for food. Maybe they’ll get drunk and sleep through the dismal horror of it all.

That is the housing spectrum. But what do we mean by homelessness in Gibraltar?

There is no legal definition of homelessness in Gibraltar that I could find. When I made enquires at the Housing Department, I was politely told that they don’t have a responsibility to house homeless people. If someone has no address, they cannot go on the housing waiting list. If they are not on the housing waiting list, then they don’t count. They are not part of any statistic. They have ‘no fixed abode’ if they are picked up for vagrancy by the police. In fact, if you are on the housing waiting list and you lose your home so you have no address, you are removed from the waiting list. That’s it. No rights. Nothing. You shelter in the street, in a doorway, in an empty ruined building. That is homelessness.

And then there are the hidden homeless. These are the ones who have some family or friends that they can turn to. They sleep on a selection of mattresses on the floor, a blow up bed here, a sofa there. They move from place to place so that they don’t cause too much burden on any one friend or family member. These are the people who struggle to maintain jobs – it’s hard to go to work in the morning if you’re not too sure where you are going to bed down that night. These are the people who find it hard to sustain personal relationships. Some have to split their families: Mum and a kid or two in one address, Dad and another kid at another. The pressures are horrendous. Health, especially mental health suffers. Pressure is put on the GHA as doctors become involved with the ailments that arise. Education for the kids suffers, their attainment and aspirations suffer. Pressure is added to society long term if those living under those pressures succumb to self-medicating on alcohol or drugs, or if the kids become pawns in difficult divorces.

Then there are those who manage to keep their families together but have to live in one small room in a crowded flat. Again, family relationships become strained, health suffers, children find it hard to study and do well at school. It becomes a challenge to hold down a job. It is no accident that people with difficult housing situations find it harder to make successes of their lives. They can, but it’s a tough challenge. For those whose circumstances really are hard, for example, sharing crowded accommodation with an abusive person, the challenges can feel insurmountable. The pressure on society to help the fall out of homelessness or poor housing through support by social workers, or educational psychologists means more financial layout for the taxpayer.

These last two scenarios may seem as if people have some form of housing because there is a roof over their heads. But if a household does not have their own, exclusive home, then this household is homeless.

Then there are those whose housing is so dilapidated, so poorly served by running water, so damaged with damp, so riddled with vermin that the persons living in them are also homeless. If the property you live in is not fit for human habitation, then you are homeless.

It’s not hard to define homelessness. What is much harder is for a society to decide whether there should be a duty to help house the homeless, what the extent of that duty should be, which persons should be helped, how far Government should help and what form that help should take. One of the hardest parts of the conversation is to discuss how to help those who have not lived here very long but are homeless, or those who have lived here years but don’t have the ‘right’ documentation. It is always hard to talk about nationality or ethnic origin, but those conversations in relation to housing have to be had. Every country will deal with the homeless in a different way and every country will find different ways of financing efficient housing systems. But a sophisticated, civilised and compassionate society, as I believe Gibraltar to be, should have an established and effective system of helping the homeless, of distributing social housing and ensuring ease of access to a variety of tenures to everyone.

A responsible government ensures that everyone has an option for some form of decent housing. Gibraltar sadly falls far short of this. The one positive is that those discussions that we as a society need to have about housing, appear to be happening at last.

Even in times of pandemic, we can still have public discourse

Who Should Help Our Homeless?

By Guest Contributor, David King

A conversation after The Scandal on Our Doorstep

Some weeks ago, in the midst of a Spring thunderstorm, we evicted sixteen men from the hall where we had sheltered ourselves from their pandemic.

Your priority was protecting your health and your loved ones’. The sixteen had that too, and with it the anxiety of knowing that healthcare would be uncertain, the dread of knowing that their physical warmth and the warmth of dignity we gave them were fleeting. Imagine if one of your family was among them.

I’d help my family, but they’re not my family, are they? I don’t think they’re even Gibraltarians. The Government offered them free flights home – they should have gone!

There’s a reason why they’re not ‘home’ to begin with. Every homeless person takes a different route to the street but they often find common themes to their stories, crises that we all live through at some point and which, by a happy turn of fate, most of us avoid having to confront all at once. Some of these men were hit by these crises in their countries of origin so they came to Gibraltar to work, but security in a migrant worker’s life is fragile. There’s nothing for them ‘back home’.

If their countries are so dire then isn’t Gibraltar going to become a beacon of humanitarian compassion? People will come here from all over. We’ll be swamped!

Be under no illusion that homelessness in Gibraltar will ever be a desirable existence, and don’t underestimate what an uncertain and dangerous undertaking it is for someone who has no money to migrate across a continent. People do that when they fear for their lives. Besides, I quite like the thought of Gibraltar being ‘a beacon of humanitarian compassion’.

Well fine. If the ones we have now insist on staying then they can accept the consequences, I’m comfortable with that cause it’s their decision. Anyway, it’s not like we have people dying on the streets – the Government won’t allow it.

Actually, the Government has no obligation to help the homeless. Not at the moment, anyway, but we can change that because government is an an instrument of our will to organise in order to help each other. Government is not constituted so that it can rule over us but so that it can serve us; our ministers are public servants and in democracy their will would be an extension of our own.

Now, the individuals that form our Government are not cruel people. They mean well and, to varying degrees of success, they seek to do the best they can for us, but they are no more qualified to be moral arbiters than you and I. That the Government does not give more urgency to our homeless people’s plea seems to justify apathy among the rest of us, a license to carry on our lives as though our comfort comes without penalty to others. In fact, this is not indifference from Government, nor the result of a considered moral decision by our representatives but rather it results from their lack of mandate from us. Our ministers draw their mandate to govern from our social conscience.

Fine, less theory now, let’s talk practicalities. We still haven’t been able to house all our own people adequately. How are we going to house foreigners?

We have shown ourselves capable of housing huge numbers of people. With the motive of waging war we once moved a mountain to house 10,000 people within the Rock and to shelter thousands more from air raids. These caverns stand wasted.

When the frontier closed and we needed hundreds of labourers from outside we found room for them, building housing in a gorge in the Rock and repurposing old barrack blocks.

We showed ourselves capable again in the 1980s when our housing crisis became so urgent that we built a hundred prefabricated flats on a car park.

We can do that again. Around Gibraltar we find precious land given over to storing cars for private export, we find planning permission notices to refurbish derelict buildings as business premises.

Okay, so go and tell the Government how you feel. In the meantime there are plenty of other people that look after the homeless, so there’s no need to bother me. Caring for the poor is the sort of thing religious people do.

Yes, that’s something that some religions in Gibraltar share, often a result of a historical rejection of their prophets: Israel wandered the desert for forty years; Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness; Muhammad was robbed of his possessions and home in Mecca; Baha’u’llah spent a lifetime exiled, homeless or imprisoned. Sacred teachings remind us of our own obligation: Jesus’ mission was so focused on the poor that it gave rise to the school of liberation theology; the Quran records that who saves one life saves the world entire, the Talmud says this of the people of Israel; and the parable of the starfish presents a similar idea to a secular audience.

Also in the secular sphere, philosophers like Peter Singer and Ursula Le Guin give us some captivating thought experiments, compelling us to action. It is appropriate to consider the secular as a foil to religion here, as the recent help to our homeless has come from people motivated not so much by scripture as by a love born from a personal understanding of what these men are going through.

Regardless of our immediate motives, whether religious or secular, the imperative to help comes ultimately from natural law which in turn comes from our evolutionary drive to protect not our own selfish genes, but the collective well-being of our species. That’s why we feel empathy for others.

That’s what separates us from animals, right?

That’s what separates us from psychopaths.

Listen, I wish these homeless people well, I really do, but to be honest I just haven’t got time for this in my life.

Hear me out a little longer, then you can get on with your day, I promise. You said earlier that you’d help your family if they were homeless. I think you’d also help a homeless person that you saw regularly, right? Maybe if they were often near your home?

Probably, I suppose. I’m a good person, you know?

And to a lesser degree you might feel obligation to a distant cousin in a nearby country. And you’d feel no duty at all to a stranger who is far from you, after all to empathise with the suffering of the whole would be more than you can bear.

No, of course not.

The homeless have nothing, are nothing. Ask yourself, what can you do about this?

So your sense of duty, then, is dependent on your proximity to others, whether by a personal connection to them or by their physical immediacy. Somewhere along this continuum there is a line on one side of which you help and beyond which you don’t. I’m asking you to think about where you draw this line.

If enough of us rethink our individual choices and our prejudices about who is entitled to be cared about we can then mature as a society. We can grow beyond the infantile tribalism which asserts that by an accident of birth that brought us naked and slimy to Gibraltar we are more morally upright and more deserving of life’s comforts than the Portuguese builder, the Spanish cleaner, the Moroccan migrant in a police cell or the gaunt Romanian under the archway.

While we grow, let’s check our self-image of Gibraltar being a compassionate community until we believe it wholly and without self-deceit, until our compassion stretches as far as the man you knew was there huddled and coughing when you hurried past to empty your bins.

Homeless, nameless, aging before his time…..

The Scandal on our Doorstep

It is a troubling, stormy afternoon as I settle down to write this piece. Outside my relatively water-proof sea-facing windows the sky is an ominous shade of purple slicked with yellow; a bruise across the landscape, squatting thick and malevolent on the Rock.

Malevolent. It seems an appropriate word to spring to mind on the day that 16 or so homeless men were turfed out unceremoniously from their temporary shelter and back onto the grimy streets of a rainy Gibraltar. As the storm broke and the rain lashed down to stir the filth in our sewers, half a dozen or so of those men were to be seen huddled together at Casemates, their worldly possessions shoved into supermarket carrier bags, their only solace a tin of cheap beer and some tobacco.

Any archway, bridge or doorstep suffices when there is nowhere you can go

And before the sanctimonious hoi polloi clamber onto their high rocking horses, I want to affirm that when you have nothing in life, the comfort and oblivion provided by nicotine and alcohol are irresistible. Many people, poor and rich alike, self-medicate for all sorts of reasons, stress, for example. There are few situations more stressful than having nowhere to live. Added to that, there is the stress of having no shelter while we are still in the clutches of a serious pandemic. In fact, the numbers of cases on the Rock were on the increase as Government officials ushered these people out onto the streets, out wherever the winds of fate would carry them.

Because, having nothing, they have no control over what happens to them next. When you’re homeless, life becomes a series of reactions to immediate needs: to shelter from the rain, to beg for food, to find a dark corner for bodily functions, to creep into a clinic with a racking cough and beg for some medicine, to rummage at the stinking bottom of a restaurant bin for some scraps…

It was entirely the right thing to do as we approached full lockdown back in March. We had to make sure, as the Covid-19 threat increased, that the street homeless in Gibraltar had shelter, indoors, in safety. I make no judgements as to whether the offer of the Garrison Gym as a temporary shelter was made for the benefit of the homeless, to ensure they were safe and able to access medical services if they had contracted the virus, or whether, the reverse was true, to keep the community safe from the virus potentially being spread by the homeless and infecting the rest of us privileged folk who had homes in which we could comfortably lock down. I like to think the generous offer was motivated by the former.

So there then followed a reach out exercise. There are extremely generous people in our community who fully understand the sheer desperation of the poor and the destitute who live in Gibraltar. Let’s not pander to the pompous pretence that poverty does not exist here. It does, as the individuals who co-ordinate food and clothing distributions even under ‘normal’ circumstances will testify. There were those who spent lockdown preparing meals for the homeless while the rest of us binge-watched Netflix, took up living room yoga, or logged into webinars to ‘improve our minds’. Others left the safety of their own homes every day to make sure those meals arrived at the shelter.

Despite the somewhat Spartan feel of the makeshift dormitory at the Garrison Gym – military camp beds set out in a row along the length of a wall with no privacy afforded to their occupants; a toilet and shower; a TV screen and a sofa; a couple of visits from a GP and from a social worker – the men that spent the most intense part of lockdown here were by and large sorry to have to leave. Eight or so weeks of feeling safe, of becoming confident of eating a warm meal each day, of being clean, of using a toilet instead of having to crouch in a dark corner like some kind of wild animal and then given a week’s notice to quit the Gym, left some of them in utter despair at returning to the horrors of living on the streets. At the shelter, they had companionship. They began to feel a sense of dignity again. Thanks to the generosity of volunteers and a couple of visits from health and social services, they felt cared for instead of ignored. They sensed that in some small way they counted, instead of being overlooked by passers-by eager to pretend they are not there. They mattered, instead of feeling invisible.

In fact, let’s just pause for a moment and gather some sense of what it means to be homeless in Gibraltar. Being homeless goes far beyond not having a physical building with a door and a lock, where you can relax, feel safe, lead a fruitful life. Being homeless, having no address, means you can’t be given employment, your ID card becomes invalidated, you can’t access health care unless you are wheeled in to A&E, you can’t get benefits, you can’t register to find work, you can’t vote…you can’t even register on the housing list and seek help from social care services. You become a non-person. There is nowhere you can turn to be able to get on your feet if you fall into the pit of street homelessness in Gibraltar.

In Gibraltar, there is no way of getting a helping hand to help you onto your feet. Because that is what anyone living on the streets wants – not a Government flat – there are enough people arguing over the scraps of housing that the Government owns. In fact, as the Government has said in the past, in law, Gibraltar has no duty of care to the homeless. Only charities and charitable people help out, and this help is very limited. And people are still arrested and slung in jail for ‘vagrancy’, which, when you’re exhausted from traipsing the asphalt, appears a pretty attractive option.

The homeless want a base, a place they can be clean, an address so they can register at the job centre and find work. Then they can register for health care. Then they can build up contributions in case they become jobless again so they can claim some kind of support. Then they can seriously tackle those complex problems that led them to be homeless in the first place. Then they can rebuild their lives. Maybe they’ll build up sufficient money to move into their own apartment. Maybe they’ll start a new life elsewhere. But they won’t be suffering on the streets. In one of the wealthiest communities in Europe, where empty flats adorn our skyline, no-one should be suffering on the streets.

And, as some readers start to bleat about who is or who is not ‘Gibraltarian’ enough to deserve a local home, let’s just pause. Let’s remember that it doesn’t matter where in the world a person hails from, what colour their skin, how their surname is spelt. Every person needs a home. Every person needs the safety and stability of a home from which they can order their lives, regain their health and become a fully-functioning, engaged, contributing member of society.

Modular housing for the homeless in Ladywell, Lewisham

I am Gibraltarian. I have been homeless. I have worked with the homeless. And, but for an arbitrary roll of the wheel of fortune, I may well be homeless again. I never would have expected the apparently caring, generous, modern, wealthy society that is Gibraltar to turn its back on those most destitute in our city. I understand the fears that ‘we will be a magnet’ to other homeless. That is a myth I will not try to bust within the confines of this article but will return to in some later post.

A society where the most vulnerable are left on the streets to fend for themselves really has to question its values. There are many examples from across the world of solutions for homelessness – pre-fabricated modular buildings such as that suggested by the Government this week would suit a housing solution for the homeless, for example. Turning a blind eye to the homeless, as we seem to do, is never a solution. It is a cop out. Locking the doors of the Garrison Gym behind those men last Sunday was a cop-out. Surely Gibraltar can, and must, do better.

Towards the new

It has been some months since I last posted on this blog. I wanted to step back from the flurry of activity of the general election campaign and observe to see what positive changes, if any, were being made to our society by the Government, a GSLP/Liberal Alliance government that had won a third term, but that perhaps had been shaken a little. There are now three political parties in Gibraltar, and Together Gibraltar, a party of only one year’s standing at the time of the General Election in October 2019, had an MP – the Right Honourable Marlene Hassan-Nahon. In fact, Marlene won more votes than any of the other opposition MPs. Together Gibraltar narrowly missed out on winning a second seat – only some 35 votes keeping Craig Sacarello out of Parliament. The nine existing ministers saw a decided reduction in their votes. Times, politics and Gibraltar have changed.

But that was then, and as I write this piece, Gibraltar is facing a new reality. We are in the throes of a pandemic which has caused the deaths of over 350,000 people worldwide and which has forced government after government to ‘lockdown’ their countries in a bid to control the ravages of COVID-19. The impact on the world economy is yet to be fully felt, but the short term prognosis from forecasters makes for gloomy reading.

And yet, there is always a place for positive thinking. People have had to stop in their tracks. They have been at home, familiarising themselves properly with their own lives, their families, their values. We have all had a chance – to a greater or lesser extent – to evaluate what is important to the human family. We have rediscovered the joy of breathing clean air, even in city centres, and of waking to the sound of birdsong instead of traffic. We have learned that we can communicate effectively online, that we can enjoy theatre and film and music and storytelling at a distance, that we can engage and socialise (virtual pub quizzes are fun, really!).

We have discovered the importance of slowing the pace, of looking after our mental health, of valuing our physical health. We have realised that the least valued members of our growth-driven, consumerist societies are actually the most important: nurses, care workers, street cleaners, emergency response teams. We learned that we could work from home and that teachers are highly skilled professionals teaching our children, not baby-sitters that enable us to go to work. We have taken time to walk, to enjoy views that we never bother to really look at. We have re-discovered elderly neighbours and learned the joys of taking time to make sure they are okay, that they have what they need. We have learned to give, not just to take.

This has been a time for reflection.

Now, as our society steadily unlocks, we have the chance to start some things afresh. We can take control of our streets and make sure that we can all get around but without pumping deadly toxins into our air.

We can rework our value system so that those on whom we so heavily depend for our health and our safety are properly recompensed.

We can work to make sure that those at greatest need and those who are most vulnerable receive the right support to make the most of their lives.

We have the chance to work on our education system to make sure we continue to provide children with the right base from which to learn, where they feel safe, secure and happy to engage with learning, where home-based resources and technology can be used to complement school-based learning, where those with special needs are fully integrated into the education system and fully valued as members of our community.

We can help people find decent homes so that they do not need to sleep on the streets or in derelict buildings or on relatives’ couches…

There is so much we can make better and now is the time to start.

We have heard the phrase coined all too often: we are facing a ‘new normal’. I would rather not revert to the ‘normal’ because for so many, ‘normal’ was not good enough. Let’s look instead at a whole new start for a new Gibraltar.

The time for change has come

“Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.”
Roald Dahl

The sun has set on three weeks of strong election campaigns from politicians and their supporters. On Thursday 17th October, the polls open and Gibraltar can make its decision on who should run the government. The wheels of democracy are turning, and it is joyful to be part of it. For generations before us, people have fought – and died – to have the right to cast a vote on who should lead their country. It has been an absolute privilege to have taken such an active role in this election, to have been given the chance to offer what experience, knowledge, ideas and effort I have to try to bring something better to the lives of the people of Gibraltar.

With my colleagues at Together Gibraltar, the possibility of a change for the better has opened up. No longer are we stuck with the same, stale, uninspired style of politics. As voters, we now have a choice. We can choose to be represented by a democratically elected slate of ten candidates – ministers – who themselves are broadly representatives of all our community. It is Together Gibraltar that has the will and the determination as well as skills to ensure the full transparency and accountability in government that Gibraltar deserves. It is Together Gibraltar that has the skills and experience to steer this small ship through the stormy seas not just of Brexit, but through volatile times. We have the route fully mapped out. And we have a robust economic plan fit for the twenty-first century.

https://www.togethergibraltar.com/candidates

We can choose to change our systems so that our government is run more efficiently. We can choose to clean our environment radically, and contribute our share to the world’s efforts to reverse catastrophic climate change. We can choose to support our highly valued civil and public servants fully with rewarding work, properly resourced departments, professional career paths and further training. We can create a business environment that really does foster wealth generating enterprises. We can have a comprehensive education system that fosters lifelong learning. We can be a more equal and more just society, which is what our future generations deserve.

I have been honoured to work with a talented and dedicated team at Together Gibraltar, led by the inspirational Marlene Hassan Nahon. Her passion, her drive, her integrity and her strength have motivated us all. A vote for Marlene is a vote for the change we all crave and the leadership Gibraltar needs.

Sian Jones has been a model of fearlessness in politics, a powerful presence, calm, rational and with a breath-taking depth of knowledge and vision. She has the ability, experience and connections to take Gibraltar far further into the global stage than it has travelled this far – and some of the journey to date has only been made possible because of her incredible work with the DLT Regulations. She knows economics and understands its applications in the twenty-first century. A vote for Sian will see new growth for our economy and a new vision for Gibraltar’s future wealth.

Neil Samtani has shown me that listening is the most powerful form of communication. Ready to learn from and understand everyone he meets, Neil has offered unstinting support to all the Together Gibraltar team. His vast reserves of energy and his engagement with people throughout our community have brought to life a vibrant vision for our infrastructure, for new transport systems and for an urban regeneration for the upper town that will transform or community. A vote for Neil is a vote that will finally breathe new life to those sadly neglected corners of our city.

Daniel Ghio has the strength, energy and charisma of youth and he combines this perfectly with his knowledge and enthusiasm for computer technology. He will bring a new lease of life to the development of technology throughout government processes. He is also a talented musician and has experienced every level of creativity and performance throughout Gibraltar. He is hungry to bring about the reformation we need to develop our own cultural identity and foster artistic talent across all disciplines. He will bring new opportunities, new outlets, new spaces for our creatives. A vote for Daniel is a vote to create the connection between creativity and the new digital world that Gibraltar needs to overcome the challenges of the future.

Tamsin Suarez is a powerful campaigner, champion of equality and the rights of the underprivileged. She is energetic and indefatigable. I am in awe of her ability to nurture her family and balance her responsibilities as a parent, with her fierce capacity to defend the rights of those who cannot exercise them fully. A vote for Tamsin is a vote for breaking down barriers and ensure that everyone feels valued and respected, and that justice is properly served.

Erika Ann Pozo’s powerful sense of what is right and wrong drives her and sets an example to the rest of us. Highly self-motivated, quick to grasp priorities and ready to understand the needs of others, Erika will set the bar for government accountability and transparency. Skilled in compliance for the insurance industry and a strong player in the board room, Erika is fearless in her approach to any challenge and Gibraltar needs that quality of courage combined with ruthless honesty. A vote for Erika is a vote for the cleaning up of all that corruption and nepotism and cronyism that we all know exist.

From Craig Sacarello I have learned just how much Gibraltar really can do to improve our environment and to set about really effecively tackling climate change. A sportsman and businessman all his life, Craig is not just about visionary ideas, he is about action, about putting them into practise. Craig doesn’t just set targets, he goes about smashing them. His determination is awesome and something we can all learn from. A vote for Craig is a vote for cleaning our air, our seas, our earth, for rewilding our upper rock and for truly greening up our city.

Kamlesh Khubchand has taught me that patience and a calm approach to arguments are all vital to perseverance and persuasion. His business acumen is matched fully by his resolve to serve his beloved Gibraltar and thrust aside the shadows that have been cast over our community by the spectre of inefficient government. His holistic vision of Gibraltar as a business hub far exceeds anything that the other parties have presented, and he combines this with his love of Gibraltar’s rich, cultural diverse history to offer a support to the tourism sector that will improve the visitor’s experience to Gibraltar exponentially. Under Kamlesh’s watch, every visitor to Gibraltar will leave our shores an enthusiastic ambassador for the Rock. A vote for Kamlesh is a vote for a transformation in the way that Gibraltar works.

John Montegriffo might well have been my neighbour when we were kids. We grew up in Willis Road, kids of the sixties. John has shown me that politics can have heart, can be compassionate. Politics is not just about schoolyard scraps in parliament. John’s erudite policies are all about making sure that those whose lives take a most unfortunate turn have all the support they need to overcome their difficulties. Years in leadership in social services having to find solution to the most complex of problems has given John every skill, every tool necessary to help our community when it most needs that help. In John’s hands, our politics are safe from cynicism and full of compassion. A vote for John is a vote for changing our social care system so that everyone can live a decent life full of purpose.

Finally there is me. I have professional experience in both education and in housing and the drive to get things done, to change things for the better. And I have learned so much from this talented, dedicated and committed team, and from the many, many people across Gibraltar who have stopped to speak to me about themselves, and about their hopes and aspirations for a new future for Gibraltar. Thank you, all of you.

Together Gibraltar is all of us, candidate, supporters and each and every person of Gibraltar. We all believe there is a better way. Please vote for all of us when you go into the polling booths. Vote for a better Gibraltar.

“Elections belong to the people.”
Abraham Lincoln

Means testing for the housing waiting list

This post was first published on 14th October 2019 by YGTV

https://www.yourgibraltartv.com/blogs/20128-what-about-means-testing?fbclid=IwAR226bgYD8EwWuxIk-kKUm5GJOFfelRim9yUtIcoL0E3jWgTf6Btv5MX6LA

“…The Ombudsman was of the opinion that the Department should ensure that housing applicants are means tested before they are allocated a flat and only those who cannot afford to purchase a property in Gibraltar are given an allocation, and existing tenants whose income exceeds a predetermined level should be encouraged to move to the private sector and vacate their government flats…” 24th January 2005
Gibraltar Public Services Ombudsman, report on Case 586, 24/01/05

We are still waiting…..

The not so fortunate

” Housing is absolutely essential to human flourishing. Without stable shelter, it all falls apart.”
Matthew Desmond

Let’s not forget during this election, that there are some people in Gibraltar who live in unimaginably hard conditions – overcrowded, unsanitary, unsafe housing. Mostly these are pre-war rent controlled properties, where people who earn very little if anything at all try to live, because there is nowhere else that they can live. Rents are too high, zero hours contracts or agency working just don’t allow you to lift your head above the poverty line and one income is simply not enough to see you through to paying the average rent levels demanded for newer housing these days.

The result of years of ineffective housing policies, ineffective housing management and ineffective management of waiting lists and allocations processes have resulted in slum conditions that are worse than I recall when I was a kid in the sixties. At least then we could say that we had very little available housing. Now there is no excuse. It just proves that focusing on building to sell on 50/50 only works for some and certainly not for those that most need it.

Today I went door to door in parts of the Upper Town. I say crumbling ceilings, a shower where the waste trap is connected to the sewage inspection pit so that when it rains the shower tray fills with excrement – a recipe for diphtheria. A toilet inside a kitchen separated from cooking facilities by a curtain. A room where five people sleep in a space roughly 3m x 3m on sofas and mattresses rolled out on a floor. Black fungus coating the walls. Wiring that is dangerous to the point of constituting a fire hazard. No privacy. No chance to rest properly before a day’s work. No chance to study and succeed in education. No chance to relax and be happy and feel safe or secure.

In many cases, their landlords would love to improve the properties, but cannot do so. Some properties are in such bad conditions, that you simply cannot work around the tenants, but need the property gutted and rebuilt. Except that unless the tenants are housed by the Government, this cannot happen. And somehow, these people are made to wait, and wait and wait. It is inhumane. And worse, than that, it is unnecessary. And that means that our society is inflicting on some people a desperate cruelty. This is not how an affluent society allows its people to live. The fact that so many of these tenants are Moroccan makes it particularly bad. It smacks of a discrimination that I did not think we tolerated in this modern, multi-cultural Gibraltar. This is not what we want in our Gibraltar.

Private landlords are vital to a healthy, functioning housing system. Irresponsible, exploitative landlords are not wanted here. But decent, responsible, business-like landlords that understand that a good standard of property actually helps them to improve their businesses and increase their profitability are exactly the type of landlords that we need.

It is perfectly possible for Government to ensure that private rental housing is of a good standard, within the reach of a variety of income households by working closely with private landlords to help them make sure they can run their businesses properly, freeing them up from rent controls while supporting, caring for and rehousing into government homes, those tenants who are currently living in appalling slum conditions. Government can make sure that tenants that abuse the cheap pre-war rents can be evicted by their landlords. Government can make sure that landlords keep their properties in a good state of repair or face strict sanctions. And they can also help those who want to provide a vital service to their community by providing decent homes for rent. Like supermarkets serve their community by providing food but are made to adhere to safety regulations. All it requires is sensible, modern legislation, fast, responsive and effective interventions from civil servants and the building of close relationships with community groups and landlords. And, of course, it needs effective management of the housing allocations system – which at the moment leaves a great deal to be desired.

This is precisely what a Together Gibraltar government will do. We are waiting to start. We are waiting with a set of initiatives to get the ball rolling and clean up this stain on Gibraltar’s conscience.

“The slum is the measure of civilisation.”
Jacob August Riis

Building Skills for a New Future

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”
Plutarch

Gibraltar’s education service seems to be constantly in the public eye. From new schools to award-winning tech teams, from exam results and scholarships to the start of new vocational training courses. That delights me. It is indicative of a community that values learning, that values the education of its young people, that values its educators, and that wants to look to the future to create a better quality of life.

But I get the sense that there is something missing in Gibraltar. There is no open and clear dialogue with stakeholders and the wider community about what direction our education system should take, what it should look like for the future, how it will best serve our changing circumstances. There seems to be a clear lack of coherent strategy. Instead, we have a ‘scattergun’ approach – lots of initiatives, lots of changes which result in stress and huge workloads for all involved, largely for the teachers who have to keep teaching while all around them whirls in different directions. In recent years, just the fact that they got youngsters through each term, and that some managed to sit and pass tough exams, is enough to put teachers and their support staff on a pedestal let alone warrant an overdue pay increase. But as an approach to education, this is a disservice to our children and to our whole community.

“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
Leonardo da Vinci

Gibraltar deserves a coherent, flowing education system that nurtures a love for and an engagement with learning in all its different forms throughout life. We need an education system that works closely with business to serve the needs of our evolving economy and to help us to generate wealth. We need an education service that is planned, that has vision and foresight, that brings together all its different strands so that these work to complement each other rather than in isolation with each other. We need to empower head teachers and their teams to lead schools forward, not keep decisions centralised behind impregnable walls. For this we need vision and a clear strategic approach, something successive administrations have failed to do.

Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay

Take the announcement that we are now going to have a new progressive pathway for vocational education starting at age 14 for Level 2 students at the school, and moving up to Level 3 at the College post-16. We could have been delivering NVQ’s in workplaces and at the College for years because we have the skills and the capacity to do this in Gibraltar, if not yet the accredited trainers, but this has not been the case, meaning we have failed many of our young people.

We seem to be starting these vocational qualifications with hairdressing and beauty this year, and I have scoured the news pages but cannot seem to find details on how the system is to develop and what qualifications are to be offered, nor when. This leads to a number of questions:

What is Gibraltar’s version of ‘vocational training’? Is it an alternative pathway to professional qualifications using different teaching methods and different formats than some traditional subjects, leading to very specific career paths? Or is it an alternative to the academic route which we are providing for less able children? As you can probably tell, the former has completely different aims and likely outcomes. The latter definition leads towards an understanding that means that ‘academic’ skills are considered in some way superior and are valued accordingly, which then leads to academic pathways being given priority in policy making.
What is the precise purpose of Gibraltar’s vocational training?
Who is the vocational training for?
How far is it to be integrated with existing ‘academic’ education?
What pedagogical approaches should be used in delivering this training?
Do we need to recruit new suitably accredited teachers or train those who want to to follow this career pathway?
How are vocational courses to be accredited and validated?
How is the success of the vocational education to be assessed and measured?
How will it meet the needs of our businesses?

I could go on, but I’m sure you get my drift. The random approach that this current government has shown to many education initiatives is increasingly worrying in a world where we face existential challenges and we need a strong education system to help us develop the tools to deal with those. Our educators and our community need stability in its education system and it needs clarity as to its direction in order for us to have a successful skills system that helps us to grow an independent, diversified economy. And all this needs to be open to public discourse so that we all know about it, especially the students preparing to choose career paths.

We still need to have that national debate about vocational education as we proceed to develop vocational training. Together Gibraltar will lead that debate as part of its National Education Plan which will create a consultative body formed of stakeholders that include teachers, academics and business representatives. We will continue to evolve professional education that sits alongside and integrates with academic education so that children are given choices to best suit their aspirations and their particular skills set, and that will help us as a society to develop the critical skills needed by our business community to develop our economy. We need to consider altering the gravitational pull of university education by also offering bursaries to highly specialised courses in locations outside as well as inside UK.

We will support that professional education – a combination of ‘vocational’ training and academic courses starting at least at age 14 – through targeted resourcing, in particular ensuring that we have the right skills among our teaching community to deliver this service. That means investing in training the trainers, in good recruitment practices and in developing career progression and strong succession planning in our teaching profession. It means investing in our support services to ensure equality of access to the right education for those with special educational needs, and those gifted with outstanding talent.

Together Gibraltar’s approach to policy and strategy is holistic, participative and comprehensive. We don’t just pick sweet treats with which to tempt the electorate. Hairdressing and beauty vocational courses are great, announcing new vocational training pathways is positive, but the longevity and usefulness of these are questionable. We will deliver a fully thought out system that will grow and develop for the long term because we will do this in a consultative manner that will make sure that Gibraltar learns from the best, applies best practise at all levels and best serves our young people generation after generation.

“An investment in education pays the best interest.”
Benjamin Franklin

Why Social Housing Matters

“Home is where one starts from.”
T S Elliot

Housing cannot and should not ever be undervalued. Despite references to the effects that ‘social housing does not contribute to the economy’, housing at low rents – which, because they are at low cost, must of necessity be subsidised by the tax payer – brings many benefits to entire communities. With those benefits, come economic benefits. Let me explain.

In the first place, social housing is one of the most important tools that any government has for combating poverty and improving the quality of life for everyone in our community. There is poverty in Gibraltar. Where you have a combination of low incomes, low taxation and low welfare benefits combined with high living costs and especially high costs of housing, you have all the ingredients for poverty. Poverty in Gibraltar is often hidden because we are a small community and there is a stigma attached to poverty. But it exists.

Social housing provided at low cost by government to those with the greatest of needs and lowest of incomes alleviates poverty, and it alleviates the stress that families and individuals feel when they do not have the stability of a secure, safe, decent home to live in. Good homes at a cost that people really can afford help to safeguard health, including mental health. Homes that are soaked in damp, riddled with rot, alive with cockroaches, stinking with leaking sewage, furred with mould are the causes of diseases and prevent people from coping with chronic conditions. The knowledge that you live in accommodation that is insecure is one of the greatest causes of anxiety – leading to more serious mental health conditions. Good health in the majority of our community means less cost to our health services, and greater work productivity – to the benefit of our economy.

When housing is available at low cost relative to income, it results in more people having more money in their purses to spend freely – that, after all, is arguably one of the positive aspects of a ‘favourable tax regime’ as Gibraltar is billed to the rest of the world. More money in people’s purses means more money circulates in our economy and people will spend more on food, clothes, going out, entertainment, improving those homes and much more – to the benefit of our economy.

When people are stable, secure both in their homes and financially, they begin to be able to engage more extensively with their society. They set up community groups, spend more time and effort supporting each other. Society becomes, or remains, more cohesive, more stable, and a stable society becomes more prosperous. People invest more in their children and their families, and then their children go on to higher attainments in school and higher education.

There is ample research internationally that links poverty and low incomes to low aspirations and low educational attainment. But, when housing is decent, not only is this to the benefit of the health of tenants and their children, but with better attainment in education, people become more confident, more enterprising. They enter the workplace and forge new businesses and this generates more wealth for businesses, and for government through increases in tax revenue – to the benefit of our economy.

And of course, increases in tax revenues means greater possibilities for better public services and more government investment in our community, which in turn, through infrastructure investments, for example, adds to the growth in our overall wealth – to the benefit of our economy.

So, not only is social housing – different types and at different cost levels – essential for our economy, a good supply of social housing is good to keep the private housing market in check. What inflates property prices is the increase in building new homes for sale, whether these are subsidised by government or not. This is because the more properties there are in a low taxation economy, the more that wealthy people and corporations are attracted to investing their wealth in those properties. Demand increases and so do prices. If people on lower incomes have no choices but to become hugely indebted in order to buy at the lower end of the market where government building has fueled demand, then prices at that end will also increase. That’s how the housing economy works.

However, if people have more choices in terms of where they live because there are government rented homes and other types of lower rental homes available, then there is a lessening of demand, a lessening of supply of properties for buying, and the property market eases – to the benefit of our economy because home buyers have more money in the purses….and the cycle continues, to the benefit of our economy.

“SHOUT, the campaign which makes the case for social housing, states that every affordable home built generates an additional £108,000 in the economy and creates 2.3 jobs.”
Chartered Institute of Housing: “Rethinking Social Housing”

NB – “affordable” means affordable across sectors and not simply 50/50 ownership as in Gibraltar

Low cost rental housing is essential, and Together Gibraltar fully understands all aspects of, this.

Housing in Gibraltar, is also complex, because we have an antiquated, monolithic system that is simply does not work properly for the people it needs to work for most. So we have to find an array of solutions to make sure that there is a good supply of homes in a variety of tenure types and at a range of costs. And to start with, we need to deal with the crisis situation that so many people find themselves in.

Together Gibraltar will tackle the problem in several ways:

We will repair, refurbish and release into the government stock all those properties held empty because they have been allowed to become dilapidated.
We will ensure that we manage our existing housing stock in an efficient and effective way so that we can eliminate abuses of the system that means government homes are vacant, or sub-let while their ‘tenants’ reside outside of Gibraltar or in more luxurious properties.
We will identify pockets of land and old buildings and liaise with their owners to ensure these are also released into the rental sector.
We will use financial incentives to ensure that properties are not held empty but are quickly put out to rent or sold.
We will develop partnerships with private landlords and work closely with them to sensitively and in a financially viable way lift the pre-war rent controls and release those properties in our Upper Town into the rental sector.
We will create social landlords – non-governmental, non-profit private landlords that will specialise in developing accommodation for particular vulnerable groups, such as people fleeing domestic violence, rehabilitating young offenders, halfway homes for people who are recovering from mental illness and substance abuse among many others.
And we will build new rented homes to fill gaps in housing need – this may mean more family-sized homes for families.

These measures will increase the supply of housing at lower cost, and in particular, will create an increase in government rental accommodation. These measures will help people who cannot afford private rented or purchased homes, including key workers in lower paid jobs to return to Gibraltar from Spain where they have had to live as economic exiles. These measures will help families and individuals who are under the many stresses of various forms of vulnerability. These measures will help us to create a stronger community in many ways, because a place of shelter that provides safety, security and stability – a home – is the foundation of a cohesive community.

Together Gibraltar is committed to ensuring that we all have a chance to live in decent homes that we can truly afford. There is a better way that we can all believe in.

“Housing is absolutely essential to human flourishing. Without stable shelter, it all falls apart.”
Matthew Desmond

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