Housing Authority to lease private property as social housing

The government has launched a Housing Rent Scheme which will allow private property to be leased to the Housing Authority to be used for social housing.

Parliamentary Secretary for Social Accommodation Roderick Galdes launched the scheme at a press conference yesterday morning. The scheme is intended to encourage the owners of vacant and finished private property with one, two or three bedrooms to enter a lease agreement with the authority. The agreement will tie the two entities for ten years.

The authority will also consider property in shell form or on plan under construction.

Galdes explained that the scheme is beneficial to the property owners and at the same time, will help with the demand in social housing. He said a property owner will be able to benefit from ten years of payment at the market price of the time.

Those who will participate in the scheme will be exempted from paying tax on the rent.

In return, the Housing Authority will sublet these properties to applicants who are eligible for social accommodation. The authority will be responsible for collecting rents.

The scheme will only be eligible for those properties which have all the necessary planning permits. Galdes said that the initial target is to have 200 properties. “Of course, we are not looking for high-end, sea front property,” he added during his explanation.

The applications open in September 2017.

PN reaction

In reaction, the Nationalist Party said welcomed the initiative, saying however that the government is attempting to take the people for a ride. In a statement signed by spokesman Ivan Bartolo, the PN said the scheme is not new, as the PS tried to make believe.

A similar scheme had been introduced by the PN government in February 2012 and through it, hundreds of private properties were rented out to the government for social housing. At the time, the Opposition was against the idea.

The Labour government had in fact withdrawn the scheme in 2013. Now that the situation has become worse, the Labour government had to change its mind and introduced a similar exercise.

If it had not stopped the scheme four years ago, many more private properties would have been made available, the PN said.