Owners denounce app as ‘illegal’
A new digital app launched by a collective of activists aims to create a map of vacant homes in Portugal and press for their recovery.
The National Association of Property Owners considers the project “illegal” and has stated it will be taking legal action.
Christened “Devolutos” (meaning ‘unoccupied’), the app allows users to identify vacant houses and buildings “and add them to a map”. Its aim is to “create the most accurate picture of the nation’s commitment to revitalising urban centres and welcoming new residents while there are calls for more construction”, Nelson Vassalo, a member of the activist group, tells Lusa.
For the collective, which includes the designers and programmers who created the app, Portugal has “a housing stock ready for more productive use” – a situation the app aims to highlight, initially in Lisbon and later in the rest of the country.
According to Vassalo, censuses point to “around 48,000 homes currently unoccupied in Lisbon alone”.
If all these properties are made visible on the app, he believes they could contribute to solving the country’s (and capital’s) acute housing crisis.
Devolutos is accessible to anyone who “can photograph a vacant property and link it to its geographical location”.
The app is available free of charge for both Android and iOS devices, as well as in a web version at www.devolutos.com.
The collective sees it as simple, says Lusa, “yet the National Association of Owners labels it “illegal” because “everyone must obtain the owner’s consent to photograph (…), advertise and/ or publicise private properties”, according to association president, António Frias Marques.
Acknowledging that he would “take legal action against the authors”, Marques warned: “this matter requires organised action” and “solving the housing problem is the responsibility of public authorities”, not owners/ investors.
Marques suggested that many of the vacant homes “come from long-term contracts, where tenants have remained for many years, paying very low rents”. They require renovation work before owners can put them back on the rental market, he said, which will require “thousands and thousands of euros”.
Marques also said that the app may contain “photographs of medium and large buildings, already with approved plans to be converted into hotels” but which remain unoccupied “until work begins”.
The brains behind the app hold very different views:
“We need legislation to speed-up and unfreeze processes,” argues Nelson Vassalo, stressing properties should not stand idle for 10/ 20/ 30 years while inheritance issues are being discussed.
Vassalo et al are planning to extend their app to the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto in the coming months, and subsequently to the Algarve and the rest of the country.
António Frias Marques warns that “if the situation worsens, the legal department of the National Association of Owners will take legal action to cancel this website, because it currently offers no solutions.”
Meantime, the country’s housing crisis is to get new exposure over the weekend, with demonstrations planned in 13 towns and cities (Aveiro, Beja, Braga, Coimbra, Covilhã, Elvas, Faro, Lisbon, Portimão, Porto, Setúbal, Viana do Castelo and Viseu).
Organised by the Casa Para Viver platform, part of the Porta a Porta movement, member André Escoval has explained the central issue: “The problem we are experiencing today is a national emergency and needs immediate answers. The use of empty homes for the rental market is a measure of extreme urgency and necessity that needs to be taken as a political option to solve the problem now. We don’t want solutions for tomorrow”. ND
source material: LUSA
