Housing costs perceived to be a burden for 57.2%

The European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) survey 2018 reported that 3.4% of persons in private households in Malta lived in overcrowded dwellings.

EU-SILC is an annual panel survey that collects information on the income and living conditions of private households in Malta and Gozo.

In 2018, almost 4,000 households were interviewed.

In 2018, 55.4% of all inhabited main dwellings in Malta and Gozo were either apartments or maisonettes, while 39.9% were semi-detached or terraced houses.

Results show that the largest proportion of main dwellings (32.5%), contained five rooms. This was followed by 23.2% of main dwellings composed of six rooms, and 22.7% composed of seven or more rooms.

Home ownership was the most common type of tenure status, with 78.8% of all households owning their main dwelling. Of these, 73.8% reported that they never had a mortgage on their

main dwelling or have repaid their debt in full.

Among households with dependent children, 84.0% were homeowners. This was higher than that for households without dependent children in which case 76.2% were homeowners.

A different trend is observed among rented main dwellings, with 18.9% of households without dependent children being tenants compared to 11.3% of households with dependent children.

According to EU-SILC 2018, 3.4% of persons living in private households lived in overcrowded dwellings. The overcrowding rate is defined by the number of rooms available in the household in relation to its size and other demographics.

When looking at the overcrowding rate by tenure status, one finds that the rate for persons living in rented dwellings was 10.9%. On the other hand, the overcrowding rate of owner-occupied households was of 1.9%.

This rate can also be observed in correlation with relative poverty, where one finds that it stood at 6.8% for persons who were at-riskof poverty or social exclusion, whereas for the rest of the population living in private dwellings, it stood at 2.6%.

Housing costs were perceived to be somewhat of a burden for 57.2% of all persons living in

households. A further 19.8% considered these costs to be a heavy burden while, the remaining 23% stated that they were no burden at all.

Moreover, 54.2% of persons who were severely materially deprived considered the housing cost to be a heavy burden.

This was by far the highest percentage in any group. In contrast, only 27.5% of people at-risk-ofpoverty considered the housing cost to be a heavy burden.