I was amused last week to read a letter in a local daily ascribing all sorts of horrors to the Housing Authority’s ownership policies, and its help with subsidising interest rates in particular. The letter writer hailed from London where housing affordability has never been so dire, where people like teachers and nurses, and almost everyone like you and me, cannot own their own homes or even start on the ownership ladder, where banks have been lending seven times income, where people are renting rooms for a hundred plus a week, where overcrowding is the norm, and where a house price adjustment or crash may be on the cards due to a variety of factors, not least by the credit crunch highlighted by the Northern Rock fiasco.

Home ownership suppliers here like the Housing Authority and local banks have in fact been far more prudent than their counterparts in the UK and the results are there for all to see. Lower homelessness figures, lower rates of repossessions, better affordability ratios. And even more affordable rent levels than those produced by encouraging buy to let in the UK. In fact though the home ownership situation in Malta is certainly not perfect, it is certainly less dire than that in the UK at present.

Of course with a pseudo green cap he tells us to do something about the 50,000 empty units if, now there is a big if, he patronisingly tells us we are genuine about wanting to help first time buyers. Of course I am, and we are, but I do not believe in stealing people’s private property either.

This reeks of communism and we all know the housing disasters that communism produced with much of EU funds for housing at present going to improve their terrible communist housing estates, while we in Malta get little EU help with housing because we have been relatively very successful indeed.

The truth is that in Malta a far higher proportion of first time buyers are helped by government policies than in the UK. The truth is that in Malta a far higher proportion pay off their home loan early. And that 50,000 highly exaggerated vacant homes figure includes people’s holiday flats, summer houses and the like. We have around 30,000 empty properties and only 3,000 on a housing waiting list so what is he really suggesting, that I take these properties away from private owners as some did in the thankful past, and give them to the 3,000 who are low income? And whose properties shall I pick? Those belonging to foreigners maybe? And what about the 27,000 extra? Should I auction them off cheaply to people like him? Robbing Peter to pay Paul? Why? Is that his idea of market adjustments?

How would he feel if we took his holiday home, or if one of the properties we targeted was his?

He needs to be better informed before he starts writing such grandiose letters and coming to such ridiculous alarmist conclusions that the interest subsidy scheme is going to bring corruption. This from a country where many members of the leadership have conveniently ”forgotten” to declare large donations to their individual campaigns! Last year we opened a scheme to buy such empty units and have just signed an agreement to buy a 1950s style block in the south which we will convert to social housing for rent for our neediest citizens. But people are not keen to sell at this stage so we need to wait a bit and maybe we will, on behalf of the government be able to buy more empty properties. I certainly hope so.

Many things have contributed to rising house prices in Malta but the governments interest subsidy scheme, which he may not know were running in one form from the late nineties is certainly not a major culprit. Rising house prices have also been an integral part of increased affluence in Malta. Yes there are and will be casualties but it is not all that dire, at least not yet, and housing is still more affordable than it in from our letter writers base in London. Nor is there any evidence at all that interest subsidy schemes in Malta have ever raised house prices. The return of money invested abroad and banks increasing the loan repayment from 25 to 40 years are probably of far higher significance in any serious analysis of house price increases locally.

So it’s not just a case that people in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones. Throw them but please do inform yourself just a little bit better before you send off alarmist and ill informed emails about the governments help to first time buyers, help incidentally about which there is even cross party support on the ownership front at least, quite a rarity in our local political scene.

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