**Suspended Sentence Sparks Debate After Brutal Ħamrun Flat-Share Assault** A 34-year-old man who left his housemate with life-altering injuries after a drunken argument over unpaid utility bills has walked out of court with a suspended sentence, igniting fresh debate about Malta’s judicial approach to domestic violence cases that occur outside traditional family settings. The assault,…
# Art: Are You Safe? *How Malta’s Creative Pulse is Fighting for Survival in the Age of Rising Rents and Vanishing Venues* Valletta’s Strait Street hasn’t been this quiet since the 1980s. The jazz bars that once spilled saxophone solos onto the cobbles are shuttered; the pink neon of the old “Atlantic Bar” now flickers…
**Landlords Demand Power to Pull the Plug on Non-Paying Tenants, Sparking Island-Wide Debate** In a country where the phrase “rent is due” has become as loaded as a pastizz fresh from the oven, Maltese landlords are lobbying for a controversial new right: the power to cut water and electricity to tenants who fall behind on…
**Living but at what cost?** *From €900-a-month rabbit-warren bedsits to €1,200 “luxury” car-ports with a fold-out sofa, Malta’s rental market has become a national blood-pressure spike. We talk to the families, students and pensioners who are “making it work” – and the economists who warn the island is pricing its own soul out of existence.*…
**From the Gospel: Money… not funny at all** *By a Hot Malta Correspondent* It’s Sunday morning in Birkirkara. The church bells have just finished echoing across the rooftops, and families spill out of the Baroque parish church onto the sun-bleached square. Nonna kisses the priest’s hand; teenagers scroll TikTok while sipping Kinnie; someone’s uncle complains…
**This is Not a Chihuahua: How Malta’s Dog Obsession Sparked a Viral Sensation** Valletta’s Republic Street was buzzing louder than a chihuahua’s bark last Saturday afternoon. Outside the new pet-friendly café “Paw-lazzo,” a crowd of twenty-somethings held up hand-painted signs reading “This is NOT a chihuahua!” while their own pocket-sized pooches—dressed in hand-knitted Malta-flag sweaters—yapped…
Valletta’s Republic Street was briefly louder than the usual midday café chatter on Thursday, as a dozen young architects and activists unfurled a hand-painted banner that read “Homes Not Holding Companies” and chanted “MDA, let us build!” Passers-by stopped sipping their kinnie, tourists lowered their cameras, and pensioners on the City Gate benches leaned forward…
The Right to the Roof Over Our Heads: When Maltese Property Law Meets the Human Heart By Hot Malta On a narrow Sliema side-street, a 92-year-old woman named Maria* still hangs her washing from the same limestone balcony her mother used in 1948. Across the closed wooden door, a freshly printed court notice declares that…
Malta Developers Association Slams Affordable Housing Scheme in Courtroom Showdown By Hot Malta Newsroom The marble corridors of the Palace of Justice in Valletta echoed with more than just footsteps this morning as the Malta Developers Association (MDA) served a judicial protest against the government’s Foundation for Affordable Housing (FAH). The move throws a Molotov…
Watch: People with disabilities ‘imprisoned’ in their flats for over a month By Hot Malta Correspondent A grainy video circulating on Maltese social media this week shows a wheelchair user banging on a locked lift door in a Buġibba block while his neighbour, a blind woman, tries to calm him from the stairwell above. For…
