A bill which updates the rental laws and enables the authorities to regulate the number of people who can be accommodated in shared leased properties started being debated in parliament on Wednesday.

Housing Minister Roderick Galdes said this was the latest in a number of ‘courageous’ laws aimed at ensuring there was fairness in the housing market.

Landlords, he said, had a right to profit from their properties, but the country could not tolerate greed, such as situations where people were crammed into apartments, undermining their dignity and human rights, as well as the rights of neighbours and creating other problems, such as issues of sanitation.

Other countries, he said, had several regulations on the number of people who could live in an apartment, In Germany, for example, the laws provided for a person per 13 square metres. Malta would follow the pattern set in several European countries.

“The time of setting up dormitories in rented apartments is over. If you want to set up dormitories, apply for a guest house permit under the relevant regulations,” Galdes said.   

The bill provides that the Housing Authority shall have the right to introduce and enforce standards for safety and security with respect to dwelling houses which are leased to more than one family, including regulations which limit the number of persons who may occupy the dwelling house.

In June, Times of Malta reported how foreign workers were paying up to €250 a month each to share a single apartment in Sliema with 40 other people.

Galdes said the government had successfully obliged landlords and tenants to register their rental agreements. Some 57,000 contracts were now registered and abuse had been reduced. These legal amendments, he said, would continue to simplify the online registration process, including amendments to existing contracts to change the tenants.

The bill would also strengthen enforcement.

Galdes said the bill was the fruit of consultations with all stakeholders in the property sector, and the government remained to consider further suggestions, independently of where they came from.

The plans for the new law were first announced by the government last November. At the time Galdes had explained that landlords would be limited in the number of tenants they could rent their property to and the authorities could carry out inspections. The amended law would also give the housing watchdog the power to refuse to register an owner found to have abused past tenants.  

Shadow Minister Ivan Bartolo said on Wednesday that the government had been slow to act over abusive behaviour in the rental sector. Indeed, many of the situations provided for in this bill could have been tacked in other legislation enacted in the past few years.

Prices had shot up, he said, more people were living rough and many people were being crammed in apartments. There was also a situation where people did not rent apartments, but beds. Sometimes ‘tenants’ used a bed in the morning, and someone else in the afternoon.

Living standards were deteriorating and more people were being forced to seek second jobs, he said. All this was having consequences on the social fabric, he warned. 

A dwelling is being defined as a single room - MP

Bartolo disputed the new definition of 'dwelling' in the bill. A single room was being defined as a house, he said. It could mean that somebody having a property with five room could make five rental contracts. 

The bill says 'delling house” means 'a building, a part of a building separately let, or a room separately let...'

"Apartments are being rendered a hostel," Bartolo said.

Injecting, the minister disagreed with the Nationalist MP saying the definition was for building or premises.

Bartolo said that in the past, Labour government took properties from landlords to hand to the poor. Now the poor were being restricted to single rooms.

This bill, Bartolo said, did nothing to help tenants with a low income.