Do NGOs and representatives of tenant and families realise these weeks could be crucial to the future of house renting for families? The Rents Bill allows landlords to charge any rent they want at the beginning of a contract of lease, but allows rent rise during the course of the contract only in line with an index that is based on an average rent rise in the market. If the average goes up, the landlord has the right to raise rent up to a maximum of five per cent per year. If the average rent goes down, the tenant has no right for a decrease.

If landlords are prudent and responsible, this might work very well (once the above one-sidedness is removed). The alternative is direct rent control, which is dangerous, and is only to be resorted to in order to avoid even greater dangers.

But what looks most dangerous in the Bill as it stands is that it threatens to make short lets the rule. The Bill is part of a package, one other part of the package being a system of incentives to encourage landlords to enter into longer lets.

We all know that families need stability. It has been claimed that this Bill brings stability to families, where there once was little or none. Stability – but what stability?

Landlords who give a lease of four years or more for a three-bedroom house get a €500 yearly reward. If they lease for five years, or six or seven or 20, they still get the same reward of €500 a year.

Let us consider two landlords.

Landlord A believes that social problems are none of his business, and that if there is suffering or potential threats to tenant families, it is up to the government and the taxpayer to tackle them. His only motivation is to increase his profit.

In that case, maximum profit is to lease his flat in hiccup fashion: in short leases of four years at a time.

This means that he gets a neat sum of €500 every year, while also having the liberty to raise the rent without restrictions at every new contract, that is, every four years.

Now, many people are convinced that the majority of Maltese landlords are responsible, care for the needs of their tenants, besides very often not being very rich.

All they want is a just return that is enjoyed, but not at the expense of making weak people suffer.

So, let us consider Landlord B, who is of this type. He knows what everybody knows: that if families are uprooted from their community every four years, they never manage to set the roots that give them stability, belonging, calm and support. And their children will suffer most, by being forced to change schools over and over again.

Everybody knows that children face a challenge when they have to integrate into a school at a different time from their peers.

Though some manage to make it, especially if this happens just once in their life, others remain outsiders, unintegrated, possibly emarginated or even bullied, often with lifelong negative consequences on themselves and their family.

Landlord B, like many responsible landlords, acts responsibly and gives the family a 12-year or a 15-year lease.

Who would the law and the incentives schemes, as now proposed, reward most?

It is obvious that Landlord A gets the same annual sum as Landlord B. But Landlord A very probably gets more, by raising rents at will every four years.

Why should the taxpayer reward the one who gives less to society? Surely, a little thought can result in a scheme that is win-win: both the family and the responsible landlord to gain.

One such scheme would be that the ‘neat sum’ is on a rising scale.

During the first four years of any contract, there is no sum in the first year, then, say, €300 in the second year, €400 in the third year and then €600 for every subsequent year. This means, that short ‘hiccup’ lets of four years at a time get €1,200 every four years (average €300 per year), while stable, longer lets soon settle to a level of €600 per year.

Thus, Landlord B is rewarded by the taxpayer for giving a better service to society than Tenant A, with his ‘hiccup’ contracts.

This way, both families and good landlords would gain.

The taxpayer and government and psychologists and social workers will have less troubled families and children to take care of. And our dismal record of having most early school leavers, who are not at home enough in school and want out soonest, would stand a better chance of being improved.

NGOs and tenants and families and their representatives: please speak out before the practice of short, family-unfriendly leases takes over and will be too late to dislodge.

Charles Pace is a specialist in social policy.