Things happen and move fast in Malta. The Rent Reform White Paper came, was discussed in the media for a brief spell, and then soon vanished from the public radar even as several NGOs and individuals (this writer included) submitted to the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry for the Family, Children’s Rights and Social Solidarity their comments and suggestions.
We are now in the phase where the responsible Parliamentary Secretary is no doubt studying very carefully all submissions made, and then go to Cabinet with his own personal suggestions for legislation.
After which the real fun starts in Parliament. So far so good, some would say. But those living under landlords’ threats to increase their rents, or even having been kicked out to live in garages or rough on the streets, simply holler…. “No…bl**** hell… anything but good!”
And of course they would be right, simply because such people are living a hell of a life, day after day. These, factually among the more victimised in our society, are simply crying and praying for a totally different approach in our country to the whole subject of property ownership, property renting, and the rights and duties pertaining to such.
And so, for us with some sort of a social conscience it came as an (albeit temporary) very welcome development to read about Fredrik Gertten’s recent crowdfunded film Push.
This newspaper’s report about this documentary (November 23) provided interesting reading in that this Thomson Reuters Foundation report said many of the things that impartial observers of the local rental property scene have been saying for a long time. Let’s look at some of them.
“…Governments are under pressure to boost housing affordability and fix the growing problem of urban homelessness.” It’s no consolation for us in Malta to see that we are in the company of many countries, from the US to New Zealand, to have this serious problem to face. But then the report further adds:
“…With measures including limits on foreign buyers and more subsidized housing for the poor.” And the analogy question should immediately arise here for our own local situation.
As the delicate topics of the undoubted impact of the presence in Malta of foreign house buyers, and that of to what extent can the government afford to keep on shouldering increased responsibilities for ever more and more subsidising continue to glare us in the face, will we at the same time accept that the local is no longer a situation where the government can be having or nursing any doubts as to on which side it should be tacking when legislating in the future.
Many people will not accept the truth of greed being a characteristic of most rentiers, and hence must be constantly quelled
Why? Because, as Leilani Farha, UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, says: “…the implementation of the right to housing” can no longer be ignored by any property owner simply hell-bent or only concerned with increasing his income from the tenants in his property. Farha, an outspoken advocate of the “right to housing” also says that “…housing has [having] become a financial instrument primarily for the benefit of investors driving inequality in cities.”
Time and again this writer has written that housing should never be seen as no different to racehorses, precious art or stamp collections, investments in bonds and shares and funds, and what have you.
Indeed Farha adds: “The financialisation of housing is completely contrary to the human rights obligations of governments. You can’t treat housing like any old commodity. Gold is a commodity; housing is not. It’s a human right.” For far too long have local estate agents been allowed to propagate the purchasing of property in Malta as “a good investment”!
The allowing of unfettered liberty to property owners to commodify housing has, in Malta as elsewhere, ended up in forcing many residents, some of them indeed long-time, to move out of their homes.
Legislation should exist which obliges and limits the hands of rentiers to relating requested rents to the incomes and financial resources of both existing tenants and/or would-be new ones. And, contrary to what the White Paper says, such sensible relating should in fact start from right at the start of the owner-tenant relationship.
To think otherwise, as the White Paper proposed, is to allow owners to make unreasonable demands at the outset of a relationship and, in the process, simply drive ever more and more people into the arms of government housing and/or government subsidizing.
Many people will not accept the truth of greed being a characteristic of most rentiers, and hence must be constantly quelled.
It is no consolation for anyone to say that globally at least 150 million people are homeless. This is so because, very simply, the greed of owners and developers, for money and ever more and more of it, has evolved into total blinkers at the situations of people who simply cannot afford what is being asked from them.
No government, ever and anywhere, really has at heart the interests of a society unless it is openly and unreservedly in favour of the needy. Nobody, and that simply means nobody, should be forced to live and sleep out on the streets or in garages.
The Rents White Paper was well written, but several flaws in it shout out loud. For example, the possibility that new government housing estates will only be the result of PPPs to be hammered out only with some collective builders’ lobby.
The State will surely be getting a raw deal out of this as opposed to dealing with individual contractors who should be nudged into competitively offering best terms to the State.
But the overriding feeling at the end of this White Paper’s reading, one was that it still left unanswered the question of where and onto which side should the balance be preferably weighing: the housing needs of the needy, or the unfettered greed of property owners?
I simply cannot wait to watch Fredrik Gertten’s film.
John Consiglio teaches in the Faculty of Economics, Management, and Accountancy at the University of Malta.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece