Thousands of people took to the streets today in Portugal to protest against the housing crisis and ask the State to intervene to control rental prices, which increased by 11% in the second quarter of the year and are experiencing an increase of almost 80%. in the last decade.
The demonstrations took place peacefully throughout the country, except in the capital, Lisbon, where the police intervened to stop a group that was spraying graffiti on some bank branches, the Europa Press news agency reported.
The Just Life Movement specified that the objective of the protest “is to respond to housing policies and the lack of environmental policies, although with great preference to housing.
“The measures taken are tiny. We have a very low construction rate from a social point of view. We have less than 2%, when in the Netherlands it is 30%,” lamented Nuno Ramos de Almeida, spokesperson for the Just Life organization.
“Evidently, the construction of social housing is not solved in five minutes, but it is necessary to start building them,” he stressed.
“It is necessary not to let the market function simply because of the market. When the market works alone, builders build houses for people who have 2 million euros to pay. They are not going to build houses for the middle class or for the lower-middle class “, argument.
“There has to be regulatory intervention by the State,” said Ramos, who lamented that salaries are “below the price of houses.”
“An increase in salaries is more than necessary. We cannot live in a situation in which salaries are not enough for food and housing. This was the case in the era of fascism,” he stated.
In addition to Vida Justa, the Casas para Vivir platforms and the international platform Their Time to Pay called for the demonstration.
The Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, highlighted today that the housing strategy is a municipal competence, which is why he defended that the State “create the legal and financial instruments” for the execution of a housing strategy.
For her part, the Minister of Housing, Marina Gonçalves, spoke yesterday in favor of the protest, highlighting that “it is important that the voice be heard about a real problem” in the country.
In that sense, he recalled the package of measures approved in February to facilitate access to housing, but vetoed by the Portuguese president in August.
This package, which was finally approved last week, includes the suspension of registration of new accommodation outside low-density territories, the forced rental of houses empty for more than two years and a limit on rent for houses that are already in the market.
The housing crisis has worsened since Portugal, threatened with bankruptcy, resorted to international financial aid in 2011.
To replenish its coffers and satisfy the demands of its creditors, the country opened itself to foreign capital thanks to a series of measures such as “golden visas” – residence permits granted to wealthy investors – or tax advantages for foreign pensioners and “digital nomads.”
These investors contributed greatly to energizing the real estate market and the renewal of large cities, which are seeing short-term tourist housing proliferate in response to the influx of visitors.
According to a study by the Portuguese foundation Francisco Manuel dos Santos, between 2012 and 2021 the cost of housing increased 78% in Portugal, compared to 35% in the European Union as a whole, as reported by the AFP news agency.
In the second quarter of 2023, the average income rose again by 11% annually, according to official data published this week.
Source: Ambito
