Left bloc coordinator refers to 250,000 homes ‘ready to live in’ but lying empty
Left bloc coordinator Mariana Mortágua has accused political leaders of ignoring the elephant in the room when it comes to the country’s serious housing crisis – “250,000 empty houses ready for occupancy”.
A hugely inconvenient observation, it highlights the chasm between the politics of ‘the middle of the road’, and the extreme left.
Mortágua’s speech at the closing session of an event to present her party’s candidacy for municipal elections in Coimbra in October, referred specifically to the ‘government and the right-wing PS’. The PS is left wing (and a former partner of the Bloco in the times of António Costa’s first left wing coalition) – but clearly for Mortágua, who is now the only Bloco de Esquerda MP in parliament, the PS is no longer left wing enough.
Her speech referred to the latest study by the Institute of Housing and Urban Rehabilitation (IHRU) which stated that there are 250,000 houses neither on the sale nor available via the rental market, that are in good condition and ready to move into – mainly located in areas with the greatest real estate pressure.
“No one has the courage to look at these empty houses and say” how the country’s housing crisis can be solved, she accused. Instead all parties talk about building more.
This option of focusing on further construction is designed to ensure “money for construction companies, money for speculation”, she went on, with those who build more and those who “have empty houses, which continue to rise in value, benefiting.”
“This is why no one touches on empty houses, no one talks about them, as if they didn’t exist. They are a ghost that lingers over our cities. And it cannot be this way. If we want to solve the housing crisis, we have to address the problem of empty houses in Portugal,” she railed.
For Mariana Mortágua, it is important to identify these empty houses, to know who owns them, and why they are empty – is it due to inheritance issues, an owner without the money to renovate, public housing, or the property of an investment fund “that bought houses as a package deal”?
“For each of these situations there is a public policy response,” she suggested. But, in Mortágua’s mindset, “governments have shied away from the sector’s problems and left the choices to the market, claiming that the current housing crisis is a result of this choice”.
Without acknowledging the connection, Mariana Mortágua was harking back to one of the more radical policies of the second government of António Costa, when the minister for housing was one of the fervent supporters of Pedro Nuno Santos, the man who went on to become Mr Costa’s brief replacement as Socialist leader. Both Pedro Nuno Santos and then then housing minister were undeniable left-wingers: the ‘blueprint’ for fixing the housing crisis included one measure (never sanctioned by parliament) for effectively ‘seizing empty habitable properties’ and forcing them onto the rentals market.
Source: LUSA
