Just as the Christmas lights are coming on and the tinsel-decked shop fronts entice customers, there is compelling evidence that the poor are getting poorer in surplus Malta.

One can play around with figures and with mirrors but the hard evidence is known and daily lived by those who are suffering and who no amount of gloss can hide the reality.

This is especially the case regarding those who live in rental accommodation. The liberalization of rent and the influx of foreigners to Malta able to pay higher rents are pushing many people, especially families or single mothers with children out on the streets.

We cannot remember any other time when people had to sleep in their cars and when people have had to move back to their parents after they ran out of alternative accommodation.

The government has acknowledged this situation but it is taking its own sweet time about doing something concrete. It spent its entire first legislature without building one single block of flats to offer to those without a house. Now it says it will embark on a programme of social housing but that is still in the future, perhaps the far future for those suffering the cold nights in a car.

There could be other ways to do something without waiting to build a housing estate. Something that is more immediate and which tackles the most urgent cases, unless that is the government is seriously worried it will be swamped by crowds of applicants.

There are hundreds, nay thousands of empty and vacant properties that can be rendered habitable at a reasonable cost and which can be given to those pushed out of their homes. That may be a speedier solution.

Meanwhile, the government must again carry out an exercise to find out if government flats are actually being used and used by those to whom it was given. Just as there seems to be a big mess with regards to government factories, some of which are used to store boats etc, so too there seems to be a bigger mess with regards to government housing. Minister Farrugia had begun to do something about this in his term at Social Housing.

Apart from the housing situation, the government is called to help more the poorer of the poor. Many do not work or cannot work and it was a good move by the government to allocate more funds to this substratum as it committed itself to do in the last Budget.

There are, there must be, other ways to help these people. Some time ago, the government took over the distribution of food packets from the hands of the parish priests who used to do this. Maybe not all the real poor benefit from this and the lists must be continually updated.

Beyond all this, the whole country must rally around. It must not relegate the alleviation of suffering to the government alone. The period of Christmas, if not the spirit of Christmas Carol, must lead the country to come up with practical help to the unfortunates among us.