Recently, Alex Barg gave a statement saying that he is opening to seeing towers built in Gozo. The Labour Party has picked on this statement and is drumming up its pseudo-environmentalist credentials. Meanwhile, Alex Borg proved us right about the journalistic value of identifying the people around him as valuable information given that he himself is being fed with information and policies by the people around him.
The problem with towers in Malta is that following luxury hotels, the only residential tower that has been built in Malta recently, particularly by Joseph Portelli, is aimed for big spenders. The problem with this situation is that construction developers are lining up their dreams to build residential towers aimed for the rich while the young generations are going through a severe housing crisis. Effectively, taking more space to build even more luxury hotels and high-end towers will contribute to the housing crisis.
Then there is the factor about Gozo’s landscape being overshadowed by new towers.
Residential towers are actually the most rational and obvious solution to the housing crisis – considerably adding to the affordable property stock with as many new apartments possible via high-rise buildings will stabilise property prices and potentially even lower them further.
Big hoteliers and construction developers will prefer to continue building hotels and apartments for the rich but the real-estate industry needs to move to a different direction unless we want to see the housing crisis to compound even further. This is literally the most obvious and important issue in the ongoing crisis: how is space is utilised and for whom. Alex Borg can only distinguish himself from Labour on this matter by taking the real-estate industry into a more fair and equitable direction by allocating a significant majority of the development space in the upcoming years to affordable housing.
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