Sandro Chetcuti needs to decide whether he wants a kick in the groin or a punch to the nose.
Obviously, I'm not actually threatening to physically assault Chetcuti. The reason for my opening statement is to present an analogous choice to the one he presented to us.
On 26 September, MaltaToday reported Chetcuti as claiming that we need to decide whether we want less development or more affordable rents. It's one or the other, apparently; no other options exist in his head.
What would you prefer, to live in an overdeveloped country where cranes drop bricks on your head, or to slave away at work, only to pay half your wages in rent? A kick or a punch?
Obviously, other choices lie in between. Chetcuti will reject both options I am offering him, and likewise, we can reject his. It is not the case that we need to build more apartments in order to make rent more affordable, nor do we have to make apartments smaller.
Chetcuti's argument in this respect beggars belief. If you had any doubts that today's property market was a free-for-all xalata for developers, here's the proof.
Why should there be a minimum size imposed on new apartments, asks Chetcuti? It's like imposing a minimum amount that one can drink at a party, he said.
A better analogy would be imposing a minimum number of A' levels on students who enter university, or perhaps, imposing a minimum number of compulsory features, such as brakes and headlights, on the cars in our streets. In other words, it's about maintaining a minimum standard and not about choosing how much to drink at a party at all. Sandro Chetcuti should realize that Malta is not his playground, and not his cow to milk either.
So what are the other options that Chetcuti leaves out? First, a nationwide census of all property, especially those lying vacant or underused as environmentalists and economists have been demanding for a while.
Secondly, a tax on underused property to compel developers to regenerate neglected areas, rather than building new apartment blocks on virgin land.
The possibilities are endless. We could even introduce squatters' rights, as they did in some countries, where an abandoned property becomes mine if I move in and invest time, energy and money in it. After all, the original definition of property rights stipulate that land becomes mine only after I have put my own labour into it. Therefore, anyone who allows a property to become dilapidated ought to automatically lose his or her right to it.
How is that for a policy to increase property supply, Hon. Scicluna? We can make all those empty buildings suddenly available, just like that, with a stroke of a pen.
Developers will continue to cry 'not fair' at any suggestion that they should stop profiting at our expense. Finance ministers will go on talking abstract and outdate economics rather than facing the obvious facts on the ground.
Incredibly, Scicluna has argued that there is no rental problem because most Maltese own their property. Even if that were true, it is an unacceptable statement from a minister serving an EU country where freedom of movement for foreign workers is a given.
Also incredibly, while these experts argue for the need to increase supply, a new agency has been set up, Property Malta, whose very purpose is to increase demand. That is, while actual citizens and residents of Malta struggle to pay their rent, this agency will be looking abroad for new buyers and investors. No prizes for guessing that they will be targeting the upper end of the property spectrum and, as a consequence, average rents will continue to increase.
There is hope however. It seems that Joseph Muscat is not pandering to the developers this time, and might introduce a cap on rent increases. We will just have to wait for the budget to find out.
In the meantime, we can reject Chetcuti's stark choices, and use our intelligence to think of other options that are not being presented to us.