Lisbon City Council will pay a third of the rent to families in difficulty
The Lisbon City Council pays one third of the rent to families who are struggling to cope with their identity. Applications are open until the end of next month, said the councilor for Housing and Municipal Works, Filipa Roseta.
“It is very important that people know this. Please go to the Habitar Lisboa platform, see what the conditions are, because the CML pays a third of the rent, under certain rent and income ceilings. It is support for all residents with income from the minimum wage to 2,500 euros, if for one person, and up to 3,000 if there are two. The measure can reach a lot of the population of our city.”
Filipa Roseta spoke to the program In the Name of the Law of Renaissance, which discussed the issue of selling homes to non-resident foreigners. An measure proposed by the Left Bloc and that it was applied in Canada and in New Zealand and that the Spanish islands of Ibiza, Mallorca and Menorca will also implement.
Filipa Roseta warns that it is very important to look at the numbers before importing ideas, highlighting that the Portuguese situation is very different from that of Canada.
”Lisbon has 6 million homes for 4 million families. Canada has 15 million homes for 15 million families. Canada is in an emergency situation, it lacks resources, a completely different problem from Lisbon. Here what we have is a problem of lack of conversation. In Lisbon we have more houses than families. The problem we have to address is how to put empty houses on the market”, argues the CML councilor for Housing and Municipal Works.
Filipa Roseta says that, “until the end of the year, the municipality expects put on the market half” of the two thousand empty houses which are owned by the municipality. The councilwoman recalls that Canada’s program does not just precede the interference of foreigners to buy houses. But also the creation of housing and total taxes on the purchase of the first home, something that Carlos Moedas’ management “tried to do in Lisbon, but which the opposition did not allow”.
Bloco de Esquerda recognizes that withholding the sale of homes to non-resident foreigners is not “the silver bullet” to end the housing crisis in Portugal. But Mariana Mortágua emphasizes that the policies to attract foreign capital to real estate, either by the Government or by some municipalities, have had the effect of raising prices, making it inaccessible for the Portuguese to buy a home.
“The result of this policy in Portugal, as in other countries, of course, is that there is an influx of foreign money for the purchase of a house that cannot be compared with the dormitories of the Portuguese. It is has raised housing prices to levels that are unaffordable for a Portuguese salary. Unbearable. The average price of a 90 m2 house is 463 thousand euros. Tell me which family can afford almost half a million euros, unless they have received a bonus from TAP, to buy a house in Lisbon?”
Regarding the possibility of the security of the sale of houses to foreigners, project already delivered by BE in Parliamentbeing able to clash with European law, Mariana Mortágua devalues it, arguing that “European law cannot condemn the Portuguese not to have a home” and recalls that “the right to housing, provided for in the Constitution, is being violated every day”.
Socialist deputy Maria Begonha distances herself from the BE project, first of all due to the difficulties it could raise in Brussels. She says that “the PS is the first to recognize the housing crisis in Portugal” and assures:
“Right now, we have the biggest investment ever in housing in Portugal.”
The deputy defends the potential of the national housing programme, which includes 22 measures, including the public housing stock, with an investment of 2.3 million euros.
Maria Begonha does not move away that in the meantime it is urgent measures neededwhich should be included in the legislation on housing that the Prime Minister announced shortly.
In this week’s In the Name of the Law, real estate market analysts also participated. ISCTE professor Gonçalo Nascimento Rodrigues questions the scope of the measure proposed by BE, because, he says, we are talking about something residual.
”Housing acquisition by non-residents represents 2% of the market, roughly speaking, in number of transactions. I prefer to look and discuss policies that look at the other 98% of the market. That is what seems most relevant to me.”
Gonçalo Nascimento Rodrigues argues that there are several causes behind the rise in prices, the main one being responsibility of the European Central Bank (ECB).
”There is a much broader set of reasons, which go far beyond foreign buyers, which justified this more expansionary cycle in the real estate market in Portugal, mainly in the residential sector, roughly speaking since 2013-2014. The issue of the ECB’s expansive policy is one of them. It’s not the only one, but it’s the main one. The market per se, it is curious to see, is already trying to alleviate this issue in some way. As? Through rising interest rates.”
Ricardo Guimarães agrees that the effect of the measure proposed by BE would be “very small and, at the limit, would not be visible”. The general director of Confidencial Imobiliário points to tourist demand and Golden Visas as the fundamental pillars of urban rehabilitation. As for the existence of speculative real estate funds, it is guaranteed that they do not exist in Portugal.
”That is an urban myth. There may be investment funds with foreign capital, but they are even promoting real estate. The generation that we had in real estate development, all the main real estate developers that were in the market before the financial crisis disappeared, because they were non-essential operators leveraged in debt. And that generation of real estate development is gone. And while foreigners did not come to do real estate development, Portugal did not have the capacity to relaunch this type of activity.”
Asked to comment on information from a specialized website, “Value of Stocks”, according to which Portugal would be the first European country whose real estate bubble would burst later this year, Ricardo Guimarães recalls that, “when the pandemic broke, this risk was also admitted and it didn’t happen”. ISCTE professor Gonçalo Nascimento Rodrigues also disregards the risk of an abrupt devaluation of real estate in Portugal.
The program Em Nome da Lei, by journalist Marina Pimentel, is broadcast every Saturday, at noon, by Renaissanceand can be listened to anytime on podcast platforms.