I will always remember the thrill I got when a telephone call to my old Union Press newsroom number brought me the news that my then fiancée and I had been granted a new flat in one of the many new housing estates the Labour government of the 1970s had created, part of a massive project to tackle the acute social housing problem it had inherited from the previous administration. Until then I slept in the below-stairs space of our small Kalkara home.

Then, when we went to view this new, modern, two-bedroomed apartment in a block smack in the middle of a massive jigsaw puzzle of well-kept suburban fields, it was like entering Palazzo Parisio. There were two balconies overlooking the greenery below and, lo and behold, there was a bathroom. I had been used to straightjacket showers at home. There was even a spare toilet! No need to queue anymore, I celebrated.

Hundreds upon hundreds of other not-to-the-manor-born couples all over these islands went through the same unique experience at the time. New communities sprouted everywhere as we all settled into the brilliant-white estates where we also parked our first cars and later paraded our first offspring.

The same social phenomenon had taken place in the 1950s when, again, a Labour government had taken it upon itself to create homes for the people, tired and distraught as they were still in those post-war years of new political ideas. For our bathroom they got their shower, for our car they got their fridge and for our two children, well, they got their half-dozen.

The moral of the story is, of course, that it always had to be the working-class in power to make social housing a top issue on the national agenda. Before that, emigration and divine providence were the only alternatives. For many a decade, the only two citizens in any given village or town to own a car and to holiday abroad every yearwere the village doctor and the parish priest, both of whom got their money from the same source, of course.

When in 1958 Labour chose to resign from power over a dispute with Britain, which wanted to sack thousands of Maltese workers who had given her sterling service during the war a mere few years earlier, housing was lost, together with various other social priorities, from the administrative calendar. The colonial administration that ruled Malta and Gozo up to 1962 couldn’t care less, caught as it was in the stranglehold of local politics until the word “independence”, which only too naturally followed the “integration” issue, was no longer considered a swearword.

The conservative government of Gorg Borg Olivier elected that year – thanks mainly to horrific Church interference that included the sad imposition of mortal sin on whoever voted Labour – hardly ever thought of social housing, so immersed was it in arranging musical farewells to masses of Maltese emigrants on their way to places like Australia and Canada. The problem continued to haunt Maltese society for many years, at one time culminating in a national protest staged by the Church-oriented Cana Movement that had in its administrative bosom many well-meaning young men and women, among them, proudly I should add, Louis Galea, today a government minister. To no avail, it had to be the change of government in 1971 that finally brought about a new awakening of the issue that eventually led to today’s intro about the thrilling phone call from the Housing Department!

Yet again, however, it seems it has to be Labour to confront the new housing dilemma that young couples are facing today after two decades of inertia on the part of a government more interested in ideological challenges such as European Union membership and privatisation, rather than the basic, down-to-earth needs of the people who matter, the working class.

It is generally appreciated that there is not enough land left that would allow any government of whichever persuasion to embark on a 1970s and 1980s-style building spree, unless someone is crazy enough to chop off another piece of what’s left of our countryside. But a government with initiative and a Cabinet with vision could at least seek ways and means how to soften the economic impact that recent interest-rate hikes, unemployment and brutal commercial banking strictures have had on young couples. It is exactly what the Malta Labour Party, in Opposition but in readiness for the power that awaits it, has just done by announcing much-needed practical measures to tackle the problem.

These measures include massive assistance (10 per cent on the maximum price of Lm50,000) to first-time buyers, subsidies on first-home mortgages, a higher ceiling exempting payment of the relevant stamp duty, and a full year’s moratorium on mortgages and repayment of capital when the breadwinner of the first-home family loses his or her job. All in all a packet that leaves first-time homebuyers with Lm7,300 in their pocket.

There have since been attempts by government spokesmen to pooh-pooh these measures, even pathetically trying to compare them with existing procedures – a bubble that is instantly burst by even the most rudimentary reality check. Suddenly, social housing is back on the agenda. For many it is of course too late, alas, but for as many, however, the future is brighter. For our bathroom, will they get a Jacuzzi? For our car a yacht and for our two children a faulty condom, I wonder?