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Affordable lease. Push into neighborhoods or promote integration?

The Affordable Income Program (PRA) promoted by the Lisbon City Council is now underway and 120 houses are available. Registration is made through the Habitar Lisboa website and applications can be submitted until January 30th. The allocation is made by public draw and rents vary between 150 and 800 euros per month, depending on the typology, household and income of each person. That is, the rent value is 30% of the effort rate, reducing by 2% for each household dependent.

The PRA was announced by the municipality in 2016 and is intended, said Fernando Medina, mayor of Lisbon at the time, “for the real middle classes” who are stifled by rising house prices, giving them “opportunities for them to live in the city of Lisbon ”.

The measure is welcomed by some, but some say it is a way of deflecting the problem by creating others. João Pedro Costa, councilor of the PSD in the Lisbon City Council, said that of the 120 houses available for rent, most of them are located in municipal districts, which is a way of diverting houses from affordable income programs, as housing in Municipal neighborhoods should be available to relocate people who cannot afford a house at all. “The measure is welcome in the short term, but it lacks a structural response that is not given,” said the Social Democratic councilman.

Residents who have won previous competitions refer to the same issue: they live in municipal neighborhoods where conditions and safety are often not the best. “The door to my building, for example, has no lock, anyone can get in, and I can’t even leave the bike close to home because I’m afraid it will be stolen,” one of the residents told i. However, there are those who see the situation in another way: “It can be a form of integration and inclusion because if they keep putting people with less money away, they only create more barriers,” said another resident.

Promises

The subject of housing is discussed today in the Assembly of the Republic, in the context of the special consideration of the State Budget for 2020 – in the morning we talk about health, in the afternoon housing and transport. “The right to housing is a fundamental right indispensable for the realization of a true welfare state,” the Government said in the explanatory document, adding that its priority should therefore be to “intervene in the housing market through a large public housing stock. and cooperative, able to respond in the rental market ”.

By April 2024, the Housing Access Support Program discusses “the financial resources needed to achieve the goal of eradicating all housing shortages (…) by increasing the public housing stock, with a clear focus on the promotion of public housing oriented to people living in unworthy housing conditions or without adequate housing alternatives ”.

The issue of widening the public housing stock is one of the measures that has been mentioned over the last year. Indeed, as early as May 2019, at the Environment, Spatial Planning, Decentralization, Local Government and Housing Committee, Pedro Nuno Santos, Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, said that making affordable public housing available is crucial for “ condition the brutal rise in prices that we see throughout the national territory, but more intensely in the large urban centers ”. The public offer is only 2% of the total, recalled Pedro Nuno Santos, “absolutely insufficient value to meet the needs”. In countries such as the Netherlands, for example, the percentage of public housing available for affordable rent is around 20%, the minister recalled at the time. However, the Government recognizes that this offer cannot be obtained overnight, thus promising to “complement the public housing offer with incentives for private housing to be made available for rent”. Basically, it wants to persuade the private sector to lower rent prices. How? Reducing the VAT rate for homeowners.

For emergency situations, the Government envisages the creation of a National Urgent Accommodation Exchange for a temporary response. The guardianship also wants to “intensify the fight against discrimination in access to housing by increasing public offerings specifically targeted at the most vulnerable groups”. The implementation of the Rehabilitate for People program is another of the promises to begin this year. The goal, the government says, is to “expand housing supply in the interior territories at affordable prices.”

Austria as a good example

The housing problem is not unique to Portugal. Vienna, the capital of Austria, is now considered the most affordable public housing city in Europe and the best city in the world to live, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The Austrian city began tackling the problem about a hundred years ago with the construction of social housing buildings. It is estimated that one in four inhabitants of one of the most expensive European cities live in public houses located in neighborhoods of various social types.

In Berlin, real estate speculation led the German government to freeze rent prices for a period of five years – since 2004, prices have risen by about 120%. To avoid a housing crisis, six thousand houses built for social housing were also purchased by the state and were in private hands.

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