I read with attention the leader entitled ‘A stable rental housing market’ (October 19). I  disagree totally with the penultimate paragraph. This thing called “the free market” does not exist.

Let’s stop seeing it as some god with all the self-switching-on solutions for all our man-made problems. It will not solve this problem given the inherent greed in the character of Maltese developers, speculators, multiple property owners et al., the limited size of our land and the government’s Planning Authority being on the side of speculation and not real families’ needs, to mention just some reasons.

No sensible solution exists unless we kick off by accepting the simple truth that property ownership or rental are societal elements of such great importance that any government with a social conscience must always intervene to control what the leader refers to as “free market economic policies”.

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