Social assistance benefits ‘not enough’ for people living in rented apartments

Social assistance benefits, currently set at €100.48 a week, are not enough for families living in commercially rented apartments to live decent lives, according to a study carried out by the Anti-Poverty Forum.

The study, conducted last summer, reviewed seven different scenarios and found out that only a family scenario composed of a separate adult and two dependent children living with the adult’s parents receive enough income through social assistance to be able to live a decent life.

Two adults and two dependent children living in a commercially rented dwelling with a monthly €300 rent rate earn €5,252 less through social assistance than they require to live a decent life. The figure drops to €3,962 if one of the family members is entitled to a medical allowance.

“We believe that social benefits should be substantial enough for families to live a decent life on them alone,” Caritas executive director Leonid McKay told a social affairs committee meeting. “While we agree with the government’s philosophy of creating opportunities and reducing dependencies., there is a sector of society who will never be able to enter the labour market and will need to rely on social benefits.”       

He warned that there are pockets of poverty in Malta that must be tackled if the government is serious about fighting poverty.

“In themselves, these pockets create a culture of dependency, influencing children to grow up to live on benefits,” McKay said.

He said that the money gained from tackling benefit abuse should be used to help people who really need benefits, an initiative that Labour MP Deborah Schembri agreed with.

“Curbing benefit abuse shouldn’t just fill the government’s coffers but should be used to help those who really cannot make it by themselves,” she said.

The study also recommended the government to urgently address the financial woes of families living on social assistance and in commercially rented apartments. They also urged them to set up a national research institute on poverty, to commission a study to investigate any existing relationship between the benefit trap and the statutory minimum wage.

Schembri pointed out that some people living in poverty may not even be aware of the benefits that are available to them.

 “I recently attended a single parents conference and I was astonished to find out that only 50% of them knew that the tapering of benefits exists,” she said. “Oftentimes, the people who need benefits the most don’t even know that the incentives they can apply for even exist, while those who don’t need them know about every single one of them.”