Back in February, the prime minister emerged on a Saturday morning to announce the reform of the pre-1995 rent laws. A bit like a time-bomb under a cushion, this apparently never-ending issue has been causing anything from uncertainty to major migraines for both tenants and landlords.
Those who can read the importance of the prime minister presenting the reform himself will understand its substantial weight. Following the creation of a ministry solely dedicated to accommodation upon Robert Abela’s election in January 2020, this reform introduces an unusual dose of social conscience that has been lacking under both Joseph Muscat’s and Abela’s administration.
It was high time too.
Traditionally, this particular facet of the rent issue in Malta has been viewed as a social issue, which finds its legislative roots in the 1920s, around the time of Malta’s first self-government. Pre-1995 rents bring to the fore the incompatibility between the tenant’s right to adequate accommodation and the landlord’s right to use that property for profit.
Court judgments based on the aspect of human rights, in fact, have found that the landlords are victims of the pre-1995 mechanism and, while most have received compensation from the government, the eviction of tenants would lead to countless other issues, eventually turning tenants into the real victims of the system.
This, in fact, is what has repeatedly emerged from the European Court of Human Rights, which had decreed that the last attempt at a reform of these old rents (Act X, 2009) was in breach of the landlords’ human rights. The Maltese Constitutional Court has since followed this line.
Statistics at hand show that reforming these old rents is a challenge which will have a profound impact. Around 9,700 households fall within this particular bracket, most of which are composed of senior citizens who have spent a sizeable chunk of their adult life in Maltese and Gozitan town and village cores. Birkirkara tops the table when it comes to protected rents, followed by Sliema and a concentration of such rents in the harbour areas, not coincidentally, areas where the brunt of post-war economic hardship was borne.
The liberalist alternative would wreak further havoc. Think of the effect of forced evictions or relocation of over 9,000 households in the senior age brackets: it would uproot entire communities, displacing even more members of our society from what have now become their roots. Instead of allowing families or individuals to age in a place they can call home, such measures would forever shatter the last fragments of communitarian cohesion in our towns.
Moreover, the stream of destruction of our townscapes, heritage and history would knock down another dam: as things go, pressure by developers on senior citizens is widespread and pulling down more Modernist heritage for more apartment blocks will lead to more aesthetic howlers.
Unlike most other actors, our group believes that the state’s intervention and regulation of this sector – and, indeed, in many other sectors – is not an intrusion. It is a coherent, if rare, intervention that protects vulnerable individuals from the widespread profiteering and speculation that is rife thanks to the otherwise unregulated property and construction sectors.
In fact, unlike handouts given to the developers’ lobby for the upgrade of their machinery, this particular ‘handout’ is far from unnecessary but serves to protect those who need it most. Of course, we expect lobbies such as the MDA (who have graciously taken the landlords’ lobby under their wing) to criticise this socially-just measure in the same breath as they celebrate new records in monthly property sales every month.
There’s little time for the government to rest on its laurels, however. The ministry of agriculture is facing a similar, yet harder challenge. The spectre of farmers being evicted out of land they have tilled for generations is alive and kicking after a landmark judgment by the Constitutional Court in November.
This, too, was a time-bomb left ticking by a number of administrations which, in the past, have, through either apathy or intention, done nothing to protect farmers from losing access to land and, therefore, to livelihoods.
Unlike residential leases, the government’s intervention may be limited because any form of subsidy to farmers – including moneys aimed at preserving their right to land – are deemed as state aid by the EU.
Indeed, the situation with farming leases is a lot more complex, considering the fact that large swathes of arable land in Malta remain outside the land registry, sometimes leading to bizarre claims on the land even by landlords themselves.
Recently, a number of farmers have reported pressures from their landlords who, sometimes in an illegal manner, have asked farmers to “pack up and leave” without going through court proceedings. In addition, a sentence by the Constitutional Court about one specific case does not mean automatic eviction for all farmers.
While farmers should be informed of their rights – and we invite them to remain vigilant during this permanent onslaught from landlords on one side, road builders and speculators on the other – the government should also ensure a speedy solution to this other difficult situation.
From land grabs to dubious infrastructure (sometimes, they work hand in hand), farming has already suffered too much at the hands of neoliberal land use policies.
We believe that, once the government has taken a bold step to resolve the pre-1995 rent issue, it should also use the same yardstick and do what is socially just – protect farming from its variety of strong, ruthless and money-hungry enemies.
