When I attempt to discover the number of vacant government properties in Valletta, I am sent on a wild goose chase that not even Conan Doyle himself would have managed to contrive. From ministries I sail to estate agents, trundle on to social housing associations, rehabilitation committees, and full circle back to government offices. Who would have thought the tangle was so devious, and how would I manage to unveil the mystery number, so craftily elusive?
“No”, “no” and “no”, is all I hear when I first contact the Government Property Division within the Lands Department, where I attempt to address some questions to John Sciberras, director general. I am being too negative in assuming that there is a considerable number of vacant government-owned properties in Valletta. I am told this is not the case, and I must have gotten the facts wrong. How many are there, then, I ask. Are they quantified? Sciberras’s voice on the other end of the line is irritable and resistant. “It is best if you send me your queries via e-mail,” is his conclusion.

Upon further telephone calls, and an array of e-mails, as I am not one to be easily disheartened, I manage to make contact with communications coordinator Joe Azzopardi, who sounds more reasonable and accessible. He tells me that the number of government properties in Valletta is “negligible”, and insists that “to search for this [number] would put a lot of pressure on human resources at the department. All information can be obtained by researching the Land Registry”.
Following the advice, I contact Charles Micallef, director general Land and Public Registry, but am diverted back to the Government Property Division, as Micallef says his department cannot know which of the registered buildings are vacant or not; the Government Property Division would have this information, seeing that it is in charge of the rents. In the meantime, I also try to contact Housing Authority chairman Marisa Micallef Leyson regarding the number of government properties that are handed over to the Housing Authority, however Micallef is somehow unavailable to respond to my query.
Not crushed yet, albeit palpitating, I receive a single paragraph in reply to the seven questions I had e-mailed to Sciberras:
“The property terrier of property owned by Government in Valletta is kept at the Estate Management Department both in graphic form and on a database, but is not made available to the general public for a number of reasons. Government does its best to lease any vacant government-owned property, except those which are large enough to possibly feature in future government plans, such as for example the ex-biccerija, or those required by Government for its own use. It is a misconception that there are many large unused Government-owned buildings.”

Reading this curt reply in subtle exasperation, I email back the questions that are left unanswered, and those that are further raised. What are Government’s future plans for these buildings? Did Government develop or, at least, restore any of these properties? What exactly is “Government’s best” in trying “to lease any vacant Government-owned property”? The only answer, by Azzopardi and not Sciberras, is to my question asking which buildings are kept for government’s future plans. All buildings which have more than three rooms, Azzopardi replied. Wouldn’t those make up pretty much most of them, is my baffled reaction.

Earnestly trying to read between the [few] lines of Sciberras’s answer, I cling onto one particular phrase which I think might lead to another potential source – the Estate Management Department, which holds the Property Records under its wing. Assistant director Alfred Mifsud, in the absence of director Joseph Caruana, who is abroad, turns out to be very helpful.
Does a database of vacant government properties in Valletta exist, I splutter hastily as soon as Mifsud leads me through the breezy courtyard at Auberge de Baviere and into his quiet office. “Not really,” Mifsud replies. “We do have data. However, it is not updated.” Isn’t there an estimated number? “If I told you there are, say, a hundred properties, I would be lying, as I cannot be certain that our records our updated.”
Mifsud explains that the main problem his department has been facing in the 36 years he has been working there is the lack of human resources necessary to update and maintain the Property Records. “This work involves a lot of research, which means that some documents take us back to the 1800s. We don’t even have enough staff for the day-to-day work. I don’t have one single person solely handling records.”
There are only 24 persons working in this department, which has been requesting for more staff to be employed. Mifsud compares this number, keeping up with the property records of the Maltese Islands, to the circa 130 people working for a private estate agency, which would own a mere fraction of what Government owns.

So, suppose I’m an investor and I am interested in acquiring a government property in Valletta. What do I do? The process is rather primitive. The first step is to contact Customer Care and indicate the property one is interested in. They will let you know whether it is Government property, and if it is vacant, or leased. Then one has to apply in writing at the Estate Management Department and “after further investigations, if it is visible, or if Government does not have any use or project for it, it is issued for disposal by tender.”
“The tender system creates a lot of red tape,” according to Edgar Mifsud of Valletta-based real estate agency, City Pro. “At times, people who would be paying small, old rents for Government property they no longer inhabit might want to sell, however are scared that another investor would be able to offer a larger sum than theirs once the tender is issued, so nobody is taking risks and that is leaving a lot of government buildings empty.” Same goes for potential investors who are discouraged from going through all the bureaucracy to then have to compete when the tender is issued.

Alfred Mifsud mentions some of the problems encountered when documenting Valletta Government properties. “Valletta is full of buildings occupied by governmental departments that change location, often without informing us. So some buildings may be doubly registered, others left vacant without us being aware of it, or shown as vacant when in fact occupied.” Tracing the root of title of a property is another time-consuming intricacy and with old buildings, it sometimes involves looking for old plans at the Public Works department. Some properties are ambiguously listed in old documents as simply ‘room’, making it difficult to identify them. Others may not be absolute property of Government, as they might have been acquired under the possession and use law. Alfred Mifsud tells me that Government is working on the capitalisation of properties acquired under this law. “But, to put it straight, we don’t have enough staff to work with.”
In the meantime, however, aren’t a lot of these buildings in a severely bad state? “When it comes to government properties that need maintenance, we contact the Housing Construction and Maintenance Department. If it is an area that is in the common parts of a property, such as the drainage system or a staircase that is used by all the tenants, Government automatically fixes it.”
What about the abuse that this lack of stock-take might encourage, such as tenants breaking into adjacent vacant Government buildings and claiming them as their own, or squatters? “As for enforcement, again, our department has only two enforcement officers for the whole of Malta and Gozo,” comments Mifsud. “When we receive reports from people about places that haven’t been opened in a while, we do check what is happening.”
“It does personally pain me that Government might be losing land and property when exploiters register Government buildings as their own, and Government does not realise this before the 10 years stipulated for a caution to be presented,” confesses Mifsud. “Sometimes a place might appear neglected, but it would still be rented even if inhabited. As long as that owner is still paying rent, Government cannot really take the place away,” he continues.
“If Government had taken stock of what’s happening with its buildings, it could expect private owners to take care of their properties,” says City Pro’s Edgar Mifsud, “Government could impose a tax, as happens in Paris, on buildings that are not in a good state, so that everyone would rush to renovate and sell or rent their property. In our case, investors buy buildings, close them up and just wait for their value to rise.”
In such cases, or when, for example, a tenant would be occupying a single room in a whole vacant block, Edgar Mifsud explains how Government could entice tenants to move out for a better accommodation. Another solution would be to restore the said block, and attract people to occupy it. “Government should join forces with the private sector, and find an agency to help maximise the profits that can be made out of its property.” Edgar Mifsud believes that Valletta could be revitalised if a new, young generation is attracted to the city. Seeing the astronomical prices of properties in Valletta, Government could fix vacant properties and rent them at reasonable prices to youths.

Alfred Mifsud reveals that a proposal to start working on a Valletta masterplan was made to his department by the Ministry of Resources and Infrastructure. A meeting was held in April in which, however, the Estate Management Department asked the Ministry to specify just one part of the city, as providing the necessary data for the whole of Valletta would be practically impossible and never-ending. The Ministry would also need to pay the staff’s overtime as this would have to be done in their after hours. Mifsud quotes from the respective file in his hands: the proposal requests “the collection of data within view of analysing the information gathered and putting forward proposals for the regeneration of Valletta”. The Estate Management Department is now waiting for a reply from the Ministry of Resources and Infrastructure.
“They have no idea, believe me,” assures me YMCA’s Jean-Paul Mifsud. “We have been trying to get to the bottom of this for 12 years now, when YMCA was first formed.” When YMCA was given a homeless shelter by a private patron six years ago, the association abandoned its efforts to identify the vacant buildings owned by Government in the hope that they could possibly be used for social housing purposes. “In the past, we used to actively take a stand on this issue. Nowadays, we realise it’s a lost battle.”
“Government had also started a Lands Registration Scheme where people were asked to register their properties, but this is not being actively pursued, except for those who are buying new properties.”
YMCA is still contributing to rehabilitating Valletta however, through a very successful partnership between the Housing Authority, ETC and YMCA. “If you are a tenant either of a government or private property, there exists a government grant for which you can apply to upgrade from substandard to standard accommodation. This applies for low income earners who are a social case and live in dire conditions.” YMCA has set up a team of professionals together with ETC and the Housing Authority, including plumbers, electricians, builders and carpenters, to upgrade these residencies. Last year this team renovated 15 such houses.
Valletta Rehabilitation Committee chairman Konrad Buhagiar says that the VRP had also started working on creating a regeneration programme. In 2003, Government and VRP commissioned foreign student Nicole La Ronde to write a National Strategic Framework for Regeneration, which took Valletta as a pilot project and focused on the creation of a public-private partnership, whereby the idea was to create an agency to regenerate residential building stock and then put them on the market. The report refers to exemplary case studies, such as Grainger Town in Newcastle, UK, the Spanish metropolis Bilbao, and Santiago de Compostela.

The suggestions the report studies include vacant land value taxation, rental assistance programmes, and establishing a partnership of city managers. As “issues that need to be addressed” it lists: an inventory of buildings, monuments and sites; updating the land registry; and reforming the social housing system.
A document I came across while searching the net is also very interesting. Valletta’s former slaughterhouse [biccerija] is one of the eight case studies for which Entrust, a research project supported by the European Commission, formulated a regeneration strategy.
The reasons Entrust give for choosing the biccerija as a case study are that “the neighbourhood is amongst the worst maintained neighbourhoods of Valletta, and in desperate need for rehabilitation […] the buildings along the bastion walls enjoy pleasant sea views. The neighbourhood is rich in historical buildings, several of which are presently vacant. There is also a social stigma against the neighbourhood.”
It seems like everyone, except those who should be most concerned, is somehow actively driven with ideas and plans towards the development of Government-owned, vacant properties in Valletta. After all, don’t we all agree that they stick out like a sore thumb, in a city that clearly wants to stand on its feet again?