The owner of a property in Tarxien has been awarded €15,000 in compensation after a court found that the rent laws regime breached his fundamental rights to the enjoyment of his property.
Mr Justice Mark Chetcuti found that the €211 annual rent charged by the owner when he should have been charging at least €3,600 a year was unfair.
He was ruling in the case filed by owner Joseph Camilleri against the Attorney General and against the couple living inside the property, Sylvia and Dennis Fenech.
This judgment follows a similar case decided in June.
The property in question, in an alley in St Mary Street, Tarxien, had been requisitioned in 1985 and granted by the Housing Authority to Mr Fenech’s mother against a measly annual fee in 1986.
Despite being de-requisitioned in 2011 and without the owners even being informed, the Fenechs continued to live in the property and the owners could not charge increase rent.
The owner claimed that this was in breach of his right to the enjoyment of his property, as guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights.
The court heard how in 2015, the property was valued at €100,000 and had a rental value of €3,600 per year. Mr Camilleri told the court that the current rent laws made it impossible for him to get his property back and neither could he increase the annual rent.
As a result, the rent laws were impinging on his fundamental right to the enjoyment of his property and without receiving adequate compensation for this lack of a proper income.
The Fenechs, on the other hand, claimed that ordering them out of the property would lead to a breach of their rights. They had lived there for more than two decades and would incur extraordinary costs to rent a similar property at current rental prices. They also said they invested heavily to keep the property in a good state of repair.
However, Mr Justice Chetcuti found that Mr Camilleri's right to the enjoyment of his property was being breached by the current rent laws. He, therefore, ordered the State to pay him €15,000 in compensation and the Fenechs to vacate the property within a year and start paying €300 in rent every month.
“It is the State and not the lessee who must ensure that people’s rights are safeguarded and upheld at all times so it is the State who must, not only fork out the compensation for the breach, but also pay for the expenses related to the court case,” the judge ruled.