Rent reform will happen - minister

Rent reform will take place whether or not there is consensus on entrenching the repeal of the requisition order in the Constitution, Social Solidarity Minister Dolores Cristina insisted yesterday.

Reacting to AD chairman Harry Vassallo's comments, in which he called the government's entrenchment proposal "stupid", Ms Cristina yesterday underlined that there was "no chess game in progress" either.

"Rent reform will happen in a responsible, judicious manner," the minister reiterated.

On Tuesday, The Times reported that Cabinet favoured the entrenchment of the repeal of the requisition order in the Constitution because it would minimise the fear that a future government may reintroduce requisition laws - even though the MLP said yesterday that it had no intention of requisitioning private property if it were returned to office.

By virtue of the 1995 amendments, the Director for Social Housing no longer has the power to requisition property and lease it out to third parties. However, 10 years on, "it is obvious that property owners are still wary of renting out property to Maltese citizens for any length of time," Ms Cristina explained.

The proposal was a "concrete attempt to eliminate fears that requisition could come back into force", she said, adding that it was an initial recommendation which the Cabinet considered on Monday.

At that meeting, Ms Cristina presented a 25-page memo analysing the rent laws. The memo was the result of regular meetings that have been held at the ministry over the past months.

The Cabinet decided that the memo formed a valid basis on which to build a White Paper, although various impact assessments were needed in several areas particularly if proposals for administrative measures and schemes were to be adopted, she said.

An inter-ministerial group would now also include the Justice and Home Affairs Ministry, the Office of the Prime Minister and the Competitiveness and Communications Ministry, so that a holistic approach may be adopted in the formulation of a White Paper.

The first draft, she said, should be presented to the government in October. Assessments would have to be carried out before a final draft was ready for publication.

Outlining the sequence of events that led up to the presentation of the memo, Ms Cristina said that at its first meeting, the working group had set out its own terms of reference.

It had concluded that any meaningful reform should address the issues in question "holistically". Apart from removing anomalies in the Rent Laws, administrative measures or schemes would have to be put in place to achieve the aims of the reform, which would require a gradual approach both in the short and longer terms.

Two sub-groups were then formed. One of them gave a profile of tenants and landlords in order to assess the social and economic implications of any reform undertaken.

The other looked at the legislative aspects, focusing, in particular, on five laws. These are the 1931 Reletting of Urban Property (Regulation) Ordinance; the 1944 Rent Restriction (Dwelling Houses) Ordinance; the 1949 Housing Act; the 1959 Housing (Decontrol) Ordinance and the relevant provisions of the Civil Code.

The 1995 Census of Population and Housing and the 2000 Household Budgetary Survey were still the only data on issues related to housing that had been available for analysis, Ms Cristina said.

Highlighting the gaps in information, she said that, unfortunately, the 1995 census did not include crucial questions which would have given a clear picture of the socio-economic situation of both tenants and landlords. It did not make the distinction between tenants renting from the public and from the private sector, while information about rented summer residences was not comprehensive.

However, all information available so far had been analysed minutely, the minister said. The 2005 census would now include specific questions regarding the renting of premises and the answers given would help to give a clear, overall picture of the situation.

The working group had also looked at the different proposals made in the 1995 White Paper, those made by the members of the Micallef Commission (although they were never finalised and approved by the members) and at the suggestions, proposals and views that have appeared in the print media over many years.

The end result of this work was the memo to Cabinet that listed options on the inheritance of lease, rent payable by the tenants, dissolution of contracts of a lease, repairs to leased premises, structural changes and improvements, rented commercial premises, premises rented by the government from private owners, government-owned property, requisitioned property and on evictions and decontrol.

The working group then made an initial recommendation on each section, Ms Cristina said, adding that the memo also included a long list of possible incentives and disincentives, designed to stimulate the rental market.