A White Paper on the rent law reform is expected to be issued by the end of the month, Social Policy Minister John Dalli told Parliament yesterday.

Speaking on the Housing Authority estimates, Mr Dalli said the authority had to shift its focus to helping and encouraging people from buying to renting. He would be encouraging the authority to concentrate, more than ever before, on property that could be rented.

Although the authority was reaching its objectives, it concentrated too much on helping people in buying their homes. Programmes had to be devised to make certain rentable properties accessible to people who would never be able to buy their own homes.

Mr Dalli also said that those who were assisted should not expect help for ever, even if they no longer needed it. The government had to be focused to come up with a policy helping only those in need for as long as they needed help. Once they no longer did, the resources could be concentrated on others.

Although property developed for social housing should always reach acceptable standards, such property also had to be engineered in a way that motivated people to improve their situation. This was the balance that had to be found in the sector.

The minister said that more than three-fourths of the Maltese population owned their homes. This showed that the Maltese had the priorities right, at least in this area.

This also reflected that there existed easy access for finance for one to buy property, an investment which would leave a strong return over the years. This was why the practice of renting property in Malta was still not strong. It was also the reason for the prevailing culture not to accept levels of rent which were common in other countries.

Mr Dalli said that the Housing Authority was meeting its objectives as best it could within the limits of existing resources, which had to be administrated wisely. One could not bow to pressure and commit more funds than were available.

Housing Authority schemes showed that the authority had stretched its limited resources to satisfy the demand. But one had to instil a culture that one could not expect everything from the government. After all, resources allocated by the government came out of the taxpayer's pocket.

The government had to be focused to develop policies which would help those in need only for as long as they needed. Being in need once did not mean remaining in need for ever. People ought to be helped only to the point where they no longer needed assistance. Only then would the person involved gain freedom as an individual. This, Mr Dalli said, had to be the authority's policy.

It was important for the authority to give a proper value to its land assets and use them to maximise the number of properties it would be able to allocate to those really in need.

The minister said he hated those who took advantage of government assistance. And there were people who were experts in getting all sorts of assistance offered by the government. Unfortunately, people who were really in need did not know about the help available.

It was important, therefore, that access to information had to be improved.

Referring to the authority's schemes, Mr Dalli said that of shared ownership, under which one bought a share of the property and the rest of it at the same price within 10 years, had proved to be very popular.

Another popular scheme launched last year was that of equity sharing. Under this scheme, applicants satisfying certain conditions could have a financial advance. The sum of €4.5 million was allocated to satisfy 250 applications on a first-come-first-served basis. The amount was eventually increased.

When the limit was close to getting reached, it was announced that the scheme was going to be revised. The authority did not want to stop a scheme which proved so popular but it had to be sustainable. It was currently doing its homework and a revised sustainable scheme would be announced soon.

There were other schemes which helped people buy the home they were renting from the government, lift installation and assisting the elderly and young people who would have come out of a penal institution.

Although the authority already helped a lot of people with rentals, this was a culture which had to be intensified. There was nothing wrong for a couple to rent their home in the first months of marriage. For this to become possible, there had to be changes which would include the rent law reform.

Opposition spokesman on social protection Karl Chircop said it was important for both sides of the House to debate housing with a view to implementing what was best for the people. But housing should not denote only social problems. Years ago there existed huge problems in housing, but consecutive governments had worked hard to better the situation. Labour governments had done more than their counterparts.

Any funds spent on housing were a social investment because comfortable housing should mean better quality of life and less criminality.

Any casual observer of the housing sector would immediately notice the escalating prices of private property, which in turn was increasing pressure on the Housing Authority to cater for the needs of those who could not afford to buy their own homes on the private market. Dr Chircop agreed with minister Dalli that it was time to reconsider the situation and entice more people into renting their homes.

The authority's operations could hardly influence private property pricing, but they could shift the emphasis, which would, albeit indirectly, drive private property owners to reconsider their asking prices.

Current private property prices were around Lm50,000 for a three-bedroom unit when average salaries were around Lm5,800 - a far cry from the situation prevailing just a decade ago when the difference between prices and salaries was lower.

Dr Chircop said another worrying factor was the existence of some 50,000 vacant dwellings in a small country like Malta. Addressing this situation by making vacant dwellings suitable for modern housing could add huge value to the national economy.

Because of overspending on its schemes the Housing Authority was facing a deficit, which meant that all payments to contractors were behind schedule. This was essentially making the authority drag its feet on progress.

The latest issue of the home ownership scheme did not seem to have been such a success as in the past, and 42 units were reissued because they had not been taken up. This meant an 18 per cent deficit, at least temporarily, on the scheme.

People had been promised that residences still on blueprint would be ready by the end of 2008 but the project had fallen behind, with the result that some applicants were now refusing to have anything more to do with the scheme.

The Malta Environmental and Planning Authority (Mepa) seemed to be making things more difficult for the authority than for private developers. This was wrong because the authority had an important social responsibility.

The right-to-buy scheme, which gave lessees the right to buy their homes, provided a massive number of units that could be issued for sale. This could mean huge amounts of re-circulated funds which the authority could use to build more housing units. But the prices must be reasonable, even in view of the old age of some units - and therefore the need of maintenance expenses - and the fact that the lessees had already made appreciable outlays during the lease.

The equity sharing scheme had been such a success to the extent that it had milked the authority and the scheme had to be suspended just after the elections. Applicants were unfairly caught in the middle.

Dr Chircop said social housing still constituted a major problem, with 3,489 applications still pending. More than 600 of these were single parents, others were widows and some of the rest were families with more than two children. They were in no position to buy private property or even consider shared ownership. This was another good reason for shifting the emphasis to renting, which could cater for a good percentage of these cases.

The shared ownership scheme expected single people to buy one third of their homes and couples to buy two thirds. But this was not always feasible, and the authority should see how it could ease such people's plight and in so doing re-circulate more funds.

Concluding, Dr Chircop said the authority should employ professional project managers to help it operate better. This would eliminate such major problems as cost and time overruns, of which there had been too many cases in the past.

Nationalist MP Francis Agius stressed the need to curb abuse: people in need should get all the help they required but not those who were not eligible. Other votes had to make good for the funding that went into the sector.

He said housing was an absolute priority with residents of certain areas submitting more applications than people from other regions. Having suitable accommodation encouraged more elderly people to continue living in the community, easing the load on other services. The government, Dr Agius said, should look at abandoned property to ensure there was no abuse.

He spoke in favour of centralised services, saying these would benefit the community. He called for absolute transparency but said that people's privacy had to be safeguarded.

Dr Agius noted that housing estates were now being managed much better. However some were still run down and people should be educated how to look after property allocated to them.

He said that lifts, which changed the lives of people living in estates, were of utmost importance for the elderly and people with young children or heavy shopping.

There were altogether 88 lifts which had cost Lm3.3 million and from which more than 700 families were benefiting.

Stefan Buontempo (MLP) said he felt that the prime minister's choice of Mr Dalli as Minister for Social Policy was a step in the right direction.

Dr Buontempo in turn lambasted the former Housing Authority chairman Marisa Micallef Leyson for having abandoned her post when it suited her, even though former minister Dolores Cristina had laid out the red carpet for her. He said some information should be forthcoming as to what had really happened.

Mr Dalli had been right in speaking of the housing sector as if he were also the Finance Minister because this was important in the current circumstances. But it was the government's duty, not solely the minister's, to see that houses offered for sale to inhabitants had all the amenities.

Some people were resorting to serious ruses in their bids to be allocated social housing, such as women becoming pregnant and then claiming they were single parents. This could be even worse if the ruse was used just before the elections, with people effectively being given thousands of euros' worth of housing from national resources.

Conversely, there were old and infirm people who could not go bothering ministers for social housing, even though they were practically homeless. After all, people in need of social housing should not be allowed or encouraged to go to the ministry rather than to the authority.

On the other hand, housing should not be made into a political ploy. It was wrong to distribute more units in the weeks before an election than in the preceding five years, or to make so much propaganda about the equity sharing scheme only until the elections were over.

Dr Buontempo blamed not only politicians for the status quo, but also the people themselves. Why should people with thousands of euros in the bank, or running around in expensive cars, expect to be given government housing? This had been happening for years, under any administration.

Of course it was a feather in the national cap that 74 per cent of Maltese people owned their homes. A good part of the progress in this area had been brought about by Labour governments with the distribution of government plots, which would not make any sense today but was necessary in those times. But one should also tell what had happened with the long-promised rent reform law, which only seemed to be remembered just before elections.

Dr Buontempo questioned why the Housing Authority's estimates bore not even a word about alternative energy sources for its units, even bearing today's oil prices in mind. He would have expected some schemes to be introduced in this regard, both in the public and private sectors.

It should be enforced by Mepa that anybody building a home should install alternative energy sources.

Why was there no scheme to help those who found themselves in sudden adverse circumstances, such as loss of job, not to have their homes repossessed?

Concluding, Dr Buontempo reiterated his skepticism about any scheme to buy and refurbish vacant property to rent it out to lessees. The latest scheme had not worked and probably never would.

Nationalist MP Charló Bonnici said the 3,000 applicants for social accommodation should be helped to have suitable homes. Some of those seeking help included people with such low incomes that they could not buy or rent from the private sector. In families where only the husband worked and earned a minimum wage, this was impossible. The situation was worse in circumstances of unemployment, illness or disability.

One part of couples going through separation also sometimes ended up needing accommodation. There were people who used to live a relatively rich life and then found themselves living in relative poverty because of such situations. The authority, he said, would, as time went by, be getting more and more calls for help from people getting separated from their partners.

Illness sometimes also left relatively rich families poor. This was a typical case which should be a priority to the authority. Mr Bonnici said the elderly should continue living in their homes and authority schemes reflected this policy.

It did not make sense for the authority to continue building new stock to address the housing issue, as there were thousands of empty properties.

He expressed regret that the authority was finding it difficult to rent from the private sector and said that the earlier the rent law reform was introduced, the better.

Concluding, Mr Bonnici urged the continuation of derequisitioning property, pointing out that there were still 1,760 requisitioned units.

Parliamentary Secretary for Health Joe Cassar said 15 per cent of the population was living just above the poverty line, 75 percent of whom were unemployed single parents, a new phenomenon that the government had responded well to.

In many cases, a person's home was one's biggest investment, and through the Housing Authority the government helped more and more people to own their homes. There were five schemes to achieve this.

The R scheme made it possible for families to buy their homes from the private sector through subsidies. The scheme had been availed of by 1,381 families at a cost to the government of €1,168,595.

The government also helped families living in privately-owned homes that needed serious maintenance which the owner could genuinely not afford.

The authority even helped 181 people with maintenance works, costing €573,596, on privately-owned homes. Maintenance of social housing had benefited 194 families at a cost of €366,811. Another scheme involved the installation of lifts and bathrooms for the disabled. Through this scheme 152 persons had benefited at a cost of €525,930.

The care and repair scheme was aimed at helping senior citizens and the disabled with difficulties in negotiating with contractors for structural repairs in their homes. It was the Housing Authority itself that commissioned contractors for 77 persons at a cost of €367,040.

Dr Cassar said this meant a total of 2,317 families had benefited from the various schemes at a cost of €4,080,715 - an average of €761 per application. And this was just on six schemes.

There were other cases of positive help offered by the authority, such as the subsidy on interest when buying private homes and Vat refunds to those who carried out repairs to their first homes. These schemes had collectively helped to diminish requests for alternative accommodation.

Dr Cassar said the authority had been set up by a Nationalist government, and the present administration would continue to feel committed to helping more people to own or to repair their homes. But any kind of help must be sustainable and justified, so every resource must be well used for the best results. Waste was not an option.

The debate continued during yesterday evening's session, a report of which will be carried tomorrow.

Those taking part were Minister Dolores Cristina, Nationalist MPs Robert Arrigo, Beppe Fenech Adami and Edwin Vassallo, and Labour MPs Owen Bonnici and Noel Farrugia. Minister Dalli wound up the debate.

The estimates were approved by 34 votes in favour and 32 against after a division, with the Opposition voting against. Parliamentary Secretary Jason Azzopardi and Opposition MPs Evarist Bartolo and Marlene Pullicino were absent.