The Kamra tal-Periti council has applauded the rent White Paper recently published describing it as a benchmark and a best-practice example for public consultation processes undertaken by other public entities in the future.

The proposed mechanisms now have to be fine-tuned and embraced by political leadership, the council said in a statement on Saturday.

A new White Paper published in October proposes mandatory minimum leases as one possible means of tackling the instability and uncertainty of six-month leases, the other being financial incentives for contracts longer than a year. However, it said rent prices should remain at landlords’ discretion.

Read: Rent reform: minimum lease periods but no fixed prices

The KTP council said the White Paper properly identifies the problems with the rental market in Malta, and sets out a strategy to tackle these problems while keeping a balance between the interests of landlords and tenants. 

The White Paper quotes an increase in “family breakdowns” and “single individuals”, as one of the primary causes. However, the analysis of the quoted statistics shows that this trend, although significant, is of the same order of magnitude as the number of applicants under the Individual Investment Programme scheme, and many orders of magnitude lower than the impact of the rapid expansion of the foreign labour market.

The council said it believed rent subsidies should be converted to a housing allowance, similar to the British housing benefit, while keeping in mind the risk that increasing liquidity in the rental market coupled with sustained population growth would result in further inflationary pressures.

It highlighted the right of the landlord to withdraw from contracts in certain cases, which may give rise to abuse, since the objectives of the proposed regulation may be completely circumvented.

Social housing, which is sometimes confused with “affordable housing”, is a solution which the KTP sees as a temporary solution for those citizens who require it until they are able to move on to better prospects.

The suggestion that schemes for people to buy out their allocated “social” housing should be discontinued, since this effectively diminishes government’s social housing stock, and, as has happened in the past, effectively allows people to profit off public resources.