Government Responds To GSD Over Rental Housing
The Government has responded to the GSD’s recent housing criticism, saying it ended the sale of Government rental homes after taking office in 2011. It also says rental homes have remained in public ownership since then, alongside the delivery of affordable housing developments.
A statement from the Government follows below:
HM Government of Gibraltar has noted the response of the Leader of the Opposition to the publication yesterday of Gibraltar's affordable housing delivery figures.
Mr Azopardi has chosen to raise the question of Government rental housing. The Government welcomes that, because the GSD's record on rental housing is worse than its record on affordable housing.
It was the GSD that sold Government rental homes to their occupants. Every one of those homes left the public rental stock permanently. Those homes could never again be allocated to a family on the housing list, to a young couple starting out, or to anyone who could not afford to buy. The GSD depleted the stock it had inherited and it did so knowingly.
The GSLP/Liberal Government stopped that practice on taking office in 2011. Government rental homes have since been retained in public ownership and allocated to those who need them.
The Chief Minister has already explained this clearly in Parliament. In November 2023, he explained that the GSD had sold post-war Government housing while in office and had also committed to further sales which had not yet been completed by the time it lost office in 2011. The incoming GSLP/Liberal Government honoured those existing commitments, but stopped the GSD policy and agreed that no further post-war Government housing stock would be sold.
That distinction is important. Properties which legally completed after 2011 as a result of commitments entered into by the GSD were not evidence that the GSLP/Liberals continued the GSD's policy. They were GSD sales which this Government honoured. What this Government stopped was the continuing disposal of Gibraltar's post-war rental housing stock.
And the scale of what might otherwise have happened is clear from the GSD's own words. In Parliament in 2009, the then GSD Minister, Fabian Vinet, said that the right-to-buy process was already “well advanced” and that around 1,550 tenants, out of a stock of 3,832 properties covered by the scheme, had expressed a positive interest in purchasing their Government home. The GSD was at the time projecting potential proceeds of around £64 million from those sales.
Had the GSLP/Liberals continued that policy after 2011, the number of Government rental homes sold could have run into the thousands. Instead, we stopped it and protected those homes as part of Gibraltar's public housing stock.
For the Leader of the Opposition to now present rental housing as a GSD strength is remarkable. His party sold the family silver. This Government keeps it and adds to it.
On affordable housing, the figures published yesterday are a matter of record. GSD administrations completed 801 affordable homes across four terms in office. GSLP/Liberal administrations have completed 1,742 across four terms, rising to 2,141 on completion of Bob Peliza Mews, in addition to the 2,442 delivered by the GSLP Government led by Sir Joe Bossano. That is 4,184 affordable homes
already delivered by GSLP administrations against 801 by the GSD.
The Opposition has now issued two statements on a project that will deliver 2,300 affordable homes. Neither has said whether the Opposition supports those homes.
The Chief Minister, the Hon Fabian Picardo KC MP, said: "Mr Azopardi wants to talk about rental housing. Let us talk about it. His party sold Government rental homes and took them out of public stock forever. Those homes are gone. They cannot be allocated to anybody today, no matter how much they need one. We stopped that when we were elected in 2011. The GSD built 801 affordable homes in fifteen years and sold the rental stock that the people of Gibraltar owned. He now leads that very same GSD. We have built 1,742 affordable homes, we have retained every Government rental home in public ownership and we are creating the land for 2,300 more, every square metre of it for affordable housing and not one for the open market. The GSD sold the family silver. We are building the future. Mr Azopardi is trying to spin so much, he is getting himself into an impossible twist."
