A heavily pregnant young woman tears across the road when she sees a housing official. She bursts into tears before she even starts talking and the official quickly takes her indoors to hear her story.

Less than a year ago her life seemed rosy. Her fiancée and herself were, like so many other first time buyers, happily hunting for their first home, and enjoying the dream element of it all.

The “housing” gave her a shared ownership flat. Then she became pregnant. Her in-laws turned against her, banning their son from seeing her and beefing this up by withdrawing the financial help they were going to give the couple to start their new life together. Her own parents are going through one of those lovely, messy Maltese separations so she can’t return there.

Enter Grandpa. He says she can stay with him but grandpa’s home is a hovel, a maqjel no less, and this young woman is terrified of the life she is about to start with her baby. The woman is reassured, told to sit tight while the facts are checked and within weeks she is housed, a baby is born in a decent environment at Christmas time no less, and this story is one of many of the meek who have problems that you would think the Church would bring to our attention, but somehow they only talk about first time buyers.

The same day an engaged couple had an appointment to see the same housing official. They are furious because they were not able to buy a second garage in a block after buying the first at a very subsidised price. Threats of voting and not voting bounce off the four walls and the housing official sees the difference between the desperate woman who pleaded for help and the very arrogant attitude of those young people in front of her.

Of course these are two extreme though true (but changed for data protection purposes) examples of so called housing problems in modern Malta today. I am not surprised that politicians and political parties moan about high prices. That is their job – to try and sow discontent and to get votes. And housing in Malta is not cheap, but that is because we are well off today!

Every party exploits every opportunity in equal measure. But I am surprised, very very surprised that when the Church talks about housing it does not talk about the poor and the dispossessed, but generally about those who are the most comfortable.

Now I am not a very religious person but I do remember being pretty impressed when I was younger, not by most of the Bible but by the words of Jesus. He always stuck up for those who were poorest. He judged nobody and even had a prostitute in his entourage. He was modest, caring and very human. Is this the attitude of the Church today, or are they behaving more like a political party in this regard? What would Jesus make of this campaign on behalf of first time buyers and the Church’s silence about the really poor and desperate, of which there are many more than a handful?

The truth is that the biggest challenge in housing terms in Malta today is how to provide decent housing for those who either don’t or can’t work (the genuine) and the very many who live on a low income. Most of the others can afford to access housing and they do. Prices are high and they have gone up but the majority can access housing.

Now they may have to start buying in different localities. They may have to buy an existing property instead of a shell they can deck out to look like a Homeworks dream. They may even have to start married life renting. Expectations have to be adjusted and the Church should and must use its pulpit to do so.

What country on earth, or in the Europe we are so proud to be part of gives housing to engaged couples besides Malta? What engaged couples put in the kind of bathrooms and kitchens we do?

Of course relationships are strained. If you have the help of parents you manage, if you don’t you often don’t make it. But none of these young couples really have the housing problems that exist in their thousands and which the Church is totally silent about.

Or is it silent because it disapproves of mums without husbands and thinks only the State should look after them? That is not the way religion was taught to me when I was a child. Why is it okay to stick up for illegal immigrants and try to change public perception about them but not of the poor, the unmarried, the socially problematic? Why? Don’t the meek have a voice? Don’t the meek have a vote? If the meek don’t matter to the Church they won’t matter enough to our political classes either and that is a pity. Mind you, politicians who go out and about know what I am talking about, and see families where housing problems are compounded by illness, poverty and more.

Perhaps the Church should talk about some of the less fortunate to some of the very fortunate young people in Malta today to help them be a little more realistic and a little more appreciative of just how much they have – cars, holidays, iPods, girlfriends with all the top gear, boyfriends with Beckham hair and all that. We should also be very very wary of talking about house price increases as being a social evil. Today, many are more well-off directly or indirectly because of house price increases. A slump in prices would be a disaster though a levelling off for a while may be healthy. The housing boom has affected many, from the stonemason to the notary, from the plumber to the sellers of appliances. Also, the vast majority who have bought property would be badly hit by any fall in prices so stories in newspapers saying there will be slump because of a glut in properties may not only be wrong, but could also be dangerous. Maltese people are, and always have been very astute when it comes to buying their home. There are so far, very few repossessions or cases of people who have bought very badly indeed. The issue is not only about house prices but also incomes. There are many low-income families in Malta today who could not even begin to dream of becoming homeowners, but their parents are helping and they are managing. It is in fact our enormous housing wealth that is and has driven up prices. The majority do not even have a loan, and if you don’t believe me ask people over 50 if they have a loan and the vast majority will say no. They are the ones today who are helping the younger ones access home ownership. There are things that need to be done of course. Stamp duty is way too high for first properties and should be reduced to also encourage young couples to buy existing, older homes. We are obsessed with the new and are choosing shininess over size, because older homes are much larger and cost the same.

And yet we do need to be a bit more realistic and a bit more grateful for our enormous housing wealth. The minority who really are living in bad housing and really do not earn enough to buy a home, rent a decent one or improve their current lot, should be the focus of at least the Church’s attention.

I am amazed at their silence about their poorest bread and butter parishioners. Who in Malta today lobbies and speaks for the meek? We were told in school that they will inherit the earth one day, but in the meantime we expect the Church to speak up for them. Or is the heavily pregnant and unmarried girl I spoke about in my opening paragraph not worthy of the Church’s lobbying anymore?

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