Recovering one's possession

Frank Salt (August 31) believes that the general protection afforded to tenants against termination of the lease and increase in rent under what are commonly referred to as the "rent laws" can be gently phased out by cooperation between the party in government and the party in opposition.

He believes that the reason no party has tackled the issue while in government is purely one of losing the votes of the unprotected tenants to the other party. This argument may well be true in the hunting and trapping world, despite the growing numbers of voters who are actually alienated by this impasse, but there is much more to the preservation of the 1939 status quo than that.

As a start, the issue should, like Gaul, be divided into three parts, as there are basically three types of leases which are protected to a lesser or greater extent: dwelling houses used as a primary residence, commercial premises such as shops and warehouses and any other urban property such as garages for private use and secondary residences.

Agricultural leases, acquisition and recognition rents and grants of public tenure are yet another minefield, but I digress.

The status quo in the case of dwelling houses is a social service managed by the state at the expense of the owners and, should the protection go, the state will have to re-house at its expense as several of the tenants survive on low pensions or social assistance. Hardly a short term option and even Dar Malta in Brussels may not be big enough.

A more realistic approach would be for the state to allow for a reasonable rent established by an independent board based on a combination of square metres, location and condition. The state can then subsidise the rent in those cases where the tenant, following a suitable means test, can not possibly afford that amount. The state will recover a substantial amount of the rent in tax in any case and the subsidy should not prove to be so painful to the government and, ultimately, the taxpayer.

The unfairness of it all, however, reaches its peak with commercial leases as in these cases the law is artificially reducing the tenant's cost of sales and allowing him a bigger slice of his gross profit margin. There is no social justice at play here and there is unlikely to be much fall-out on the government in that there are no families to re-house or tenants reduced to living below the bread line. Therefore, not many votes are at risk. Here again, as perhaps the complete and sudden removal of protection may be too traumatic for our over-cosseted tenants, the fair and reasonable rent (and I do not mean 40 per cent above 1914 levels as at present) could again be established by an independent board based on fixed and transparent criteria allowing for index linked increases and also ensuring some further protection against unilateral termination by the owners.

The third category, the other-use basket, is in theory the least protected. In practice though, eviction or repossession, to use a kinder expression, it is still uphill work and one must go through the whole judicial process. There is, of course, a price to pay for shortcuts and the tenants know this which is, incidentally, another reason why the protection should go. Cars don't vote and I very much doubt whether these tenants will switch party allegiance over the loss of protection. I may be wrong, and often am, but I sincerely feel the time has come to go for it.

Many owners have more or less resigned themselves to not recovering possession of their residential property and generally harbour no desire of living in them especially when the property is in depressed areas or old, uncomfortable, impractical and dilapidated. Or gutted and split up beyond recognition by the Department for Social Housing.

What is unacceptable is the ridiculous return and the inability to sell them for more than 50 per cent of their vacant market value coupled with the arrogance and abuses of many of the tenants, even more so when the tenant is actually the government. Yes, you guessed. The government is protected as a tenant but not subject to the "rent laws" as an owner.

Reform of the rent laws need not be the end of the world as they know it for the party in government or the tenants. The justification of retaining post-war emergency legislation fades away with every passing year and market forces will eventually ensure a level and fair playing field as they have with other products and services.