The Cauldron Gibraltar has a housing crisis. Let’s try and solve it.

If you didn’t watch Viewpoint last Thursday, then I urge you to use the ‘watch again’ service via the GBC Player. This is an issue very close to my husband, John Calderon, and I as we are both volunteers with Action for Housing and are therefore at the coal-face of reality when it comes to the dire housing situation.

Jonathan Scott takes his camera crew around the back streets, upper town and estates of Gibraltar and gives us all an alarming insight into how people live in 2025. Shocking doesn’t come close.

A few metres from Main Street shops selling Breitling watches for £10k+ each, are dangerous slums not fit for humans but there are humans living in them.

You may recall that Mr Scott has revisited the subject multiple times beginning in December 2017 when he brought to light the plight of many elderly citizens living in squalid conditions, having to deal with damp, water ingress, no washing facilities and sharing a communal toilet.

Nothing changes and some of the poor souls who were there in 2017 have died waiting.

As a community we should be up in arms about this but as with everything in Gibraltar it all boils down to those handful of people in power. The GSLP/Liberal Government have been in office for almost 14 years and have not built one single government rental home. Nothing.

During the 2023 election campaign the latest Housing Minister boasted about solving the housing problem and promised to build more rental stock.

Once in power it turns out that there is ‘no land’ and they will need to reclaim it from the sea and that costs a lot of money and takes time. No land? I hear my readers gasping in horror.

There seems to be plenty of space for private developers who build luxury residential blocks (many empty and used as a tax break). Think of all the pockets of land that belong(ed) to the government (i.e. the People of Gibraltar) which have been sold off cheap: Bayside School, St. Anne’s School, Victoria Stadium, old Cepsa garage and forecourt, I could go on.

We don’t need the massive east side project AND all those expensive new towers in the north district, and we don’t need a shopping mall.

All that land could have been mixed use for our community: a new government rental estate, the new college, a sensible sized stadium, a large park, some kiosks and cafes.

Why is government flogging off land when Gibraltar has a housing crisis? Why does the DPC allow these unnecessary edifices to be built? Where is the Town Planner?

Gibraltar has a very weird two-tier system when it comes to rental accommodation.

A one-bedroom flat in Engineer Lane for example could cost you £50 a month if it is rent-controlled or £1400 per month on the open market. Most rent-controlled accommodation is in a very bad state as the landlords who are responsible for maintenance cannot afford the costs.

To be fair to landlords many of them have inherited property passed down over the years and have been lumbered with an expensive responsibility.

They cannot put the rent up by much even if they carry out a total refurbishment, the tenants are protected and cannot be evicted, and their children are also entitled to ‘inherit’ the rental.

The only solution is for the landlord to re-house them (at their cost) in another property as per the wishes of the tenant. Landlords are understandably frustrated and often refuse to carry out any maintenance in the hope that the tenants will vacate; this rarely happens.

Tenants rightly report their unsanitary living conditions to the Environmental Agency and a whole circle of antagonism is created.

Yet, our current Housing Minister, when interviewed on Viewpoint, blamed the landlords and said it was not up to government to house people.

All the people who are living in the slums have been waiting on the list for many years, they have paid their tax and social insurance like everyone else, many have serious medical conditions, some are completely housebound, why are they not allocated homes when others are?

It is 100% the responsibility of the government to house them if the government is not willing to change the antiquated Landlord & Tenant Laws.

The Principal Auditor has highlighted several cases where the Chief Minister intervened and directly allocated homes to certain people some were not even on the 900-strong housing list.

Gibraltar didn’t need the PA to tell us this as we already knew. People talk, people boast, when there’s unfair treatment word gets round, and we all see the recipients living in their gifted properties. Governments don’t have a good track record on housing allocation.

In April 2011 when Mid Harbours was handed over to people on the waiting list some had already bought houses in Spain but declined to admit that to the authorities.

They were no longer in need of social housing but instead they greedily took the keys and held onto a government rental as a pied-à-terre while others lived in cars or squatted in derelict buildings.

Recent statistics show that there are approximately one hundred and fifty cases of people living in pre-war rent-controlled flats in the old town. If these people were housed it would free up all the old property which could then be demolished or renovated. It’s a win-win! The elderly and infirm finally get a decent home to live in and Gibraltar’s upper town can be beautified and enhanced.

I have a solution...

Rooke Tower, the infamous modular prefab project, which was supposed to house residents from Mount Alvernia is empty. The Government announced it was trying to find a private company to take over the block, the same government who said they had ‘no land’ to build social housing. Why not use Rooke Tower to house the elderly on the existing waiting list? There are around 170 modern residential units purpose-built for the elderly. It’s a no-brainer.