The AD Government wants quick results from the legislative package aimed at increasing the housing supply in Portugal, and this inevitably involves local authorities. At the opening session of the 13th edition of Lisbon’s Urban Rehabilitation Week (SRU), the Secretary of State for Housing, Patrícia Gonçalves Costa, stressed that the country is facing a “social urgency” that requires accelerating the supply of homes to the market, namely by streamlining urban planning licensing procedures. “And this is work that is being carried out in partnership with local authorities,” emphasized the government official responsible for the housing portfolio.
“We simplified, made procedures more flexible and more disciplined so that there is greater predictability, both on the part of private individuals and the Administration. Private individuals need a certain number of requirements, predictability, clarity, and ease in dialogue with the Administration, and the Administration also needs procedural discipline so that it can, in fact, do its job,” Patrícia Gonçalves Costa explained to idealista/news, on the sidelines of the event, which has idealista as its official portal.
Without municipalities aligned, with capacity and with faster processes, the strategy to increase housing supply will not get off the ground.
The design of the “Construir Portugal” legislative package, with measures to increase housing supply in Portugal, is based on a chain in which the State sets the direction and provides instruments, but implementation takes place in the territories. The municipalities, namely through the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities (ANMP), have, however, already refused to give a positive opinion on the changes to the urban planning licensing regime.
The government official responsible for Housing, under the motto “the new legislative paradigm for the real estate market,” issued a warning: if Portugal wants to meet its targets, it cannot fail again in planning. Patrícia Gonçalves Costa’s message was delivered during the opening panel of SRU Lisbon, which she shared with the Mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, and Manuel Reis Campos, president of the Portuguese Confederation of Construction and Real Estate (CPCI).
Also on the first day of SRU Lisbon, the Mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, argued that housing “must be solved without ideology” and recalled the divergence between rents and incomes as a warning sign: between 2010 and 2022, “rents in Lisbon rose by 64%” and “people’s income rose by 22%,” considering this trend “unsustainable.”
Nowadays, when we look at housing policies, we see that it is very difficult, because there is almost a tendency among many parties to create ideologies around a challenge that should be resolved without ideology.
Carlos Moedas insisted that there is no “magic wand”; it must be “solved together,” structuring municipal policy around three pillars: “supply, access and rehabilitation.” On the supply side, he highlighted the recovery of nearly two thousand vacant homes, often “with 30,000 or 40,000 euros,” to put them at the service of people. Regarding access, he pointed to rent support for families whose rent exceeds 30% of their income, stating that they are already helping “more than 1,800 families” because “the problem is immediate.”