Dozens of people began waiting outside the Instituto da Habitação e da Reabilitação Urbana (IHRU) in Lisbon at dawn today to get one of the 20 daily tickets and help with paying their rents – while the Porta-a-Porta movement staged a protest to highlight a failing system.
Demanding a service that actually responds to people’s needs(without requiring them to get up in the early hours and stand in line in desperation), the movement stresses that it will be sending letters to the Secretary of State for Housing, Patrícia Gonçalves Costa, and the Minister for Infrastructure and Housing. Miguel Pinto Luz.
Spokesman André Escoval told Lusa that “the problems extend from the north to the south of the country, with cuts in rent support and the “Porta65” programme, and there are only 10 tickets in the morning and 10 tickets in the afternoon for face-to-face assistance in Lisbon and Porto. It’s impossible to get through on the Internet or by telephone,” he added.
A citizen’s right has thus been turned into a form of obstacle course designed to thwart.
The movement in defence of the right to housing criticises IHRU’s lack of response which, it says, is driving “families to despair all over the country”.
To solve “a problem that is national”, people are having to go directly to the IHRU service centres, which only exist in Lisbon and Porto, Porta-a-Porta points out. They cannot call (because lines are not answered); they cannot achieve anything online (ditto), so they either give up, or they queue in desperation at dawn.
President of IHRU António Benjamin Costa Pereira recognises the problems, says Lusa. Speaking to the state news agency earlier this month, Costa Pereira admitted that the scenario is “extremely serious”, particularly in terms of the delay in responding to almost 60,000 ‘beneficiaries’ of the Extraordinary Rent Support Programme (PAER) – who are in effect benefitting in no way at all.
Where is this going? With luck Porta-a-Porta’s letters will achieve some kind of response: the budget is under debate today, and without other parties’ support, this government won’t have one
Source: LUSA/ Jornal de Notícias
