Casa Para Viver platform stages demos in “at least 22 towns and cities”
The “Casa Para Viver” (House to Live in) movement – campaigning for policies that ‘fix’ Portugal’s housing crisis, has scheduled demonstrations on Saturday in at least 22 cities, because, it says, the housing crisis is “getting worse”.
“We’ve called another demonstration because we continue to see that, despite the packages, programmes, measures and policies announced by successive governments, the housing situation continues to worsen in our country,” Rita Silva, one of the platform’s spokespeople, representing the Vida Justa (Fair Life) movement, told Lusa.
“Families in Portugal still can’t find a solution; young people still can’t get access to housing; evictions are still rife,” she said, stressing that aside from continuing, the problems are increasing.
First and foremost because “this new government has revoked a series of achievements” the movement credited to being “a result of the mobilisations on the streets” – namely restrictions on the licences and spread of AL (short-term lettings).
“The new government has given all the freedoms back to AL, repealing the limitations that had been approved,” Silva lamented, adding that even the law that would limit the rise in the most recent rents has been repealed while the regime for non-habitual residents has been maintained, “which fosters major inflation in housing prices.”
In the view of the platform, which encompasses more than 100 organisations and has already mobilised thousands of people on the streets of various cities in three demonstrations – in June and September last year and in January this year – the new government, led by Luís Montenegro of the centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD), “is very committed to the property sector.“
Casa Para Viver even accuses the government of having made “a pact with those who speculate” and rejects the proposal to use public-private partnerships to “develop what it calls affordable housing” – which, says the platform, “isn’t even accessible to the vast majority of people who live and work” in Portugal.
“We don’t believe in the new government’s measures,” said Silva, adding that at least twenty-two cities have already joined the protest. “We see the situation worsening and that’s why we’re taking to the streets again on September 28.
“We cannot get tired of taking to the streets and protesting, because it is through these mobilisations that we will be able to make some kind of progress on housing policies,” she said.
According to Casa Para Viver’s Facebook page, there are protests already marked for: Lagos, Portimão, Aveiro, Guimarães, Leiria, Viana do Castelo, Ponta Delgada, Braga, Santarém – with the largest gathering expected in Lisbon’s Jardin de Alameda, at 3pm.
Source: LUSA
