Why is the government giving €27 million to independent schools? Minister Clifton Grima, when asked on Każin TV on February 21, explained that, without such aid, due to rising prices, fees would skyrocket. Parents would change their children’s schools. Moving them to state or Church schools would be even costlier to government. More importantly, too much changing of schools can harm children psychologically.

Changing schools can confuse children, make them anxious. It can make it difficult for them to fit in, feel at home, feel they belong, do well. More so in big schools with an anonymous atmosphere. It is especially challenging for children who move on their own and in mid-year, without being part of a group supporting each other and receiving support while they make the big step together.

Of course, a school change can also help students build up resilience and adaptability to change. Support and a welcoming environment can greatly help, though they are not guaranteed. But school change already takes place normally at age 11 and around 14. With some schools being too big, and students often already finding it hard to feel they belong and to be much more than a number, should we pile up even more challenges on them?

So, the minister is wise in insisting that school moves happening more often than necessary are to be avoided, to protect children’s well-being.

But it is not only rocketing fees that risk harming children by causing school instability. In Malta, a silent time bomb is ticking. Forced school change can also be the result of forced house change.

Until recently, Maltese tenants enjoyed the best housing stability one could dream of. Tenants knew that their tenancy was protected, not only till the end of their life, but beyond, being inherited by the children, young or old, living with them. But, since 1995, new leases are no longer protected. Something that few people know is that a recent study shows that, typically, the longest leases are now of no more than two years’ duration. Not only that. Rents can be increased without limit as soon as the two-year contract expires. If, at this point, the landlord asks for a rent the tenant cannot afford, the tenant loses the right to live there and has to change house.

Of course, pre-1995 laws were unfair to landlords. However, the way they have changed is now robbing families of home stability and their children of school stability. So, while one policy is aware and aims to protect school stability, another policy seriously undermines it.

This challenging change is not being noticed by the public because it is gradual. But in 10, 20 years’ time, when very few of the current named contracted tenants will still be living, about 100,000 rented houses will have plunged from secure leases to ones that hold for no more than two, three years at a time.

More and more families will not only suffer from school instability but also forget the benefits of being settled in a community they grow to know and to relate to, and where their elderly can gracefully age in place. 

In Germany, it is normal to see a stable tenancy and enjoyable for as long as the tenant needs it.

More and more families will not only suffer from school instability but also forget the benefits of being settled in a community- Charles Pace

Charles Pace

In Malta, the Old Normal was as good, even better. But the New Normal is among the worst possible, and the shortest imaginable.

What can be done? First (something now shockingly in short supply): awareness – by community, parents, tenants, leaders, politicians. Otherwise, no use crying over spoilt sanity.

The 2018 housing white paper promised managed markets. Markets can be managed through rules and incentives. The hope for serious incentives for long leases were dashed when the only incentive offered was in favour of leases of three years maximum. A study would probably find they are so low that they are ineffective, even in encouraging leases up to three years. They give no incentives for long leases that give family stability.

An effective incentive would be one that encourages tenancies of, say, 12 or 20 years, which is what families typically need.

An incentive for this would be one that increases steeply in the first three or five years, and go back to zero if there is a new lease. So, a lease of seven years is more advantageous to the landlord than one of six, eight is better than one of seven, 20 is better than 19 years, and so on.

But the really serious and effective incentives would be not rebates from income tax, but rebates from death duties.

At present, landlords of rented houses are subjected to death duties calculated as if the heirs are going to sell the house tomorrow for heaps of gold. This shows no mercy towards landlords with controlled or the more affordable rents.

At the present rate of death duties, it would take them literally a lifetime for rents received to make up for the sums spent on death duties.

If heirs happen to die sooner, as many do, the duties are charged once again, and the amount to be compensated for doubles, and so on. Having a house for rent makes you poorer than if you hadn’t.

The current unseeing policy will push landlords to hike their rents at every opportunity, besides putting them off long leases.

So, if we seriously want to save from extinction the past benefits of rented housing stability for our children, families and elderly, and stop doing the opposite, we must begin by introducing a serious slashing of death duties for landlords who give long leases at affordable rents.

Dr Charles Pace is a social policy academic.