Thursday, March 28

Portugal passes responsibility for controversial measures to address the housing crisis to municipalities


On Thursday, the day the Portuguese government celebrated one year in office, Prime Minister António Costa presented the final version of the legislative package that aims to solve the housing crisis in Portugal. The main novelties are related to the clarification of how measures that have generated intense debate will be applied, in particular the forced rental of unoccupied homes.

Rental cities: an investigation into large landlords in Europe

Further

In a press conference marked by the constant sounds of protest from some two dozen owners of tourist apartments who complain that their activity is in danger, the prime minister admitted that the activity “requires regulation because it has a great impact on the access to housing. Portugal has registered 108,000 accommodations of this type, the majority in the tourist regions of the Algarve and Lisbon.

António Costa left the decision of what to do with regard to tourist flats in the hands of the municipalities. In the municipalities along the coast and in those with more pressure from demand, the new licenses will be suspended and the town councils will have to draw up a municipal housing plan to define ratios for the different types of accommodation. Regarding the licenses already granted, in 2030 the town halls will have the capacity to decide whether or not to renew the licenses of the current tourist apartments. Those who decide to take their home out of short-term rental until 2024 are promised a tax break through the end of the decade.

Regarding the forced rental of unoccupied houses, there is a clarification: only apartments are applied, regions with low population density are excluded, and the houses must necessarily have been classified as empty during the last two years by the municipalities where they are located. This means that even if the houses are vacant, if they have not been classified as vacant up to now, they can only be subject to forced rent within two years. Throughout the country there are only 10,000 houses in these conditions, despite the fact that there are more than 700,000 unoccupied houses registered. The exceptions continue to be the cases of vacation homes, emigrants or the elderly in residences. After the forced lease, the owner can expect to receive a maximum rent of up to 30% above the average rent practiced in the municipality where the house is located, which will be guaranteed by the State.

In any case, the mayors of the largest municipalities in the country, such as Lisbon [dirigido por una coalición de derechas] and Porto [dirigido por un independiente], have already rejected the supervisory powers granted to them by the state. The Councilor for Housing in Lisbon maintains that the forced rent “will bring more problems than solutions” and, therefore, “it will not be done in Lisbon.” The mayor of Oeiras, Isaltino Morais, a municipality on the outskirts of Lisbon with the highest average income in the country, affirms that the solution lies in “building affordable housing on land belonging to the national agricultural reserve” and not by forced rent that “does not it will work”.

The State will also cede public properties to individuals and housing cooperatives so that they can be converted into affordable housing and will give tax benefits to those who place their houses on the rental market at controlled prices.

Portugal loses a thousand homes a month due to tourism

Also coming to an end is the Golden Visa regime which, for a decade, granted residence permits in Portugal to more than 11,000 people who invested in real estate in Portugal, almost half of whom were citizens of Chinese origin.

In an interview on the SIC television channel, on Thursday night, António Costa stated that, “when we are seeing that a thousand houses a month leave the real estate market to become tourist accommodation, we have to say that we have to stop.”

The figures consulted by elDiario.es show that only in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto there are 26,000 families on the waiting list for social housing with a rent they can pay, only in the municipality of Lisbon there are 6,000 people. At the current rate of home delivery, it would take 29 years of waiting to provide housing to all registrants. Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan plans to build 26,000 homes at controlled prices in three years, a figure similar to the number of new local accommodation registrations in the last three years, between January 2020 and December 2022.

Opposition parties have reacted with criticism. The PSD [centro-derecha] He speaks of a prime minister “without a single novelty or a message of hope” and the IL liberals say that “there are no ideas for the country.” To the left of the Socialists, criticism is directed at António Costa “strong in propaganda, but with little will to govern”, according to the words of the parliamentary leader of the Left Bloc.

After being approved by the Council of Ministers, the legislative package passes to the Assembly of the Republic, where the majority of the deputies of the Socialist Party guarantees its approval. The problem could come later. The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, will have to promulgate the law, and has already publicly criticized the program, comparing it to a “melon”: “you only know what’s inside when you open it.”

It is not known what position the President of the Republic will have now, but the changes introduced in the program show the caution of the Executive to prevent Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa from resorting to the Constitutional Court with doubts about the package of measures. In recent weeks there has been much criticism from property owners who complain that the government’s proposals attack the constitutional right to private property. On the other hand, the Portuguese Constitution also enshrines the “right of everyone to have adequate housing”.

This Saturday a demonstration was called in the main cities of the country under the slogan “Home to live”, in a spontaneous movement generated by complaints on social networks. In the manifesto published by the movement that groups almost a hundred associations, it is read that it is intended to mobilize those who feel affected by the “madness of rents and the lack of access to housing, in a context of explosion of the and a drastic increase in the cost of living”. “House to live” demands an end to evictions, the prohibition of seizing the houses that constitute the main residence of a family and the control of the value of the rents and the installments of bank loans.



www.eldiario.es