Shared ownership in Malta

Why does the Housing Authority want to include some shared ownership provision in the very wide range of schemes and services currently being offered?

Firstly, we want to offer choice.

Secondly, we want to help those who try to help themselves and work in low paid work rather than taking the far easier option of social security.

This is a tough choice when you consider that you are practically not better off and sometimes worse off working (in low paid work) than living off benefits.

Thirdly, the Housing Authority is working in a Maltese and Gozitan context and in that context and in this culture we prefer to buy rather than to rent. Almost everyone you talk to who is younger than retirement age (and I have spoken to a lot of people during six years of chairing the Housing Authority) would buy rather than rent if one could. And it is important to remember, too, that when people say they want to rent they are not really saying they want to pay a fair or a reasonable or any form of market rent. They are actually saying they want housing for free.

Years ago a survey was carried out to gauge the expectations of those on the housing waiting list and 90 per cent wanted to rent but at under Lm100 per annum! That is far less than what your average smoker on a packet a day burns away on cigarettes in a few months!

That is not renting. That is not paying, say, 20 per cent of your income for housing costs as people did in private rents when they rented 50 years ago Malta. That is housing for free and many enjoy this today at the government's expense or at the expense of private sector landlords who were justifiably incensed by the state of affairs.

True, there are the genuinely poor and dispossessed who cannot pay for their housing costs. Their social security or low wage is so inadequate for their needs (in the cases of large families or families with an illness or disability) that they need a 100 per cent subsidy to give them housing. But these are a minority and we currently do not give them enough because too many are taking something for free practically, some from the government and even more from private sector landlords.

Fourthly, properties owned or partly owned are, quite naturally, far better maintained than those which are rented. One only has to look at the disastrous state of many properties around Malta to see how many have received little or no maintenance from tenants over the years. And, of course, when they are paying pitiable rents of Lm10 to Lm100 per annum it should by right have been the tenants who repaired not the landlords.

The Housing Authority tries to help by offering a care and repair service for those tenants who are the poorest and the most vulnerable but the actual total amount which would be needed to bring private sector tenanted buildings up to scratch is well beyond the means of the authority or the government.

Any rent paid must include an element for maintenance and this was disregarded in the past (and in the present too) as if magically assuming properties will repair themselves. That is part of the reason owners leave properties to rot and can then comfort themselves by building more of the same ugly blocks that are literally littering our old and new towns. Tower Road, in Sliema is the most obvious example and right now should be more fittingly called Tower Crane Road!

Last but by no means least, the Housing Authority wants to improve communities and not to create housing which could soon become the slums of the future. We have in the last years built housing for rent and for sale. There is no doubt that in the admittedly smaller blocks we are building for rent a different client group is not looking after the common areas and is generally behaving in a way that is letting down the established communities around them.

Of course, you only need two tenants like this in a block of eight to give housing for rent a bad name but I want to lessen this fear every time people hear that some housing for rent is coming up in a locality. People rightly fear a slum and rightly fear anti-social behaviour. I cannot say their worries are not partly justified.

In some of our planned new housing blocks in the future we are going to offer shared ownership instead of units for rent. Perhaps a family can pay only Lm40 per month for housing costs. Clients on the list of the department of social housing are reluctant to pay even this as rent today. But would they pay it more willingly if this was going to buy them one quarter of the equity? Would it encourage more pride in their home? Would it encourage better maintenance? We will have to see.

We are identifying a small block of flats which by the end of the year we hope to offer to a range of family types on the housing waiting list. As they need to get loans they have to be in employment. We are starting small and seeing if this will be liked and also if it will offer the environmental improvement we are hoping for.

It is a new offer of help for those on low income. No housing for free but you pay for even a very small share of what you can afford to buy. If a flat is worth Lm20,000 we could let low income families buy a quarter of this or a half.

It addresses our cultural preferences too and we hope that by this we are sending a clear message of support to those who try to help themselves, even if they are stuck in low paid work. Effort and self-help should be encouraged and rewarded.

Ms Micallef Leyson is chairman of the Housing Authority.