But strategy generally fails to enthuse
Friday late afternoon saw Portugal’s minority government present “Construir Portugal” – the blueprint for ‘fixing the housing crisis’/ stimulating the economy and tackling the ‘brain drain’.
In essence, Construir Portugal is everything that the AD (Democratic Alliance) has promised repeatedly throughout the election campaign and since, but with a timeline added (see information online).
No sooner had the masterplan been laid out yesterday, than minority parties were all being interviewed in the parliamentary building saying why it “wasn’t enough” (suggesting they would not be voting for it if/ when the measures come up for parliamentary approval).
Without the support of minority parties, many of the government’s policies will be stuck at first base.
When it comes to measures to help young people (the under-35s), there is the hope, however, that the opposition will not stand in the government’s way (as any party that does, will naturally look as if it is in favour of continuing to see the young penalised/ excluded from help to get onto the housing ladder).
This, at least, appears to be the strategy of AD.
Housing and infrastructures minister Miguel Pinto Luz said yesterday that “all the measures in the youth area” will be presented in more detail to the country when they are approved at an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers, which will be “announced soon”.
Among the 30 measures in the Construir Portugal programme, those dedicated to young people include:
- promoting youth housing through a public guarantee to make bank financing viable
- Exemption from IMT and Stamp Duty for young people: exemption for young people up to the age of 35 on properties up to the 4th bracket – up to €316,000 euros
- Reformulation of Porta 65 to put young people’s economic reality first, ending exclusions based on income limits
- Emergency Programme for Student Accommodation/ Implementation of the National Accommodation Plan 2025-26: provision of 18,000 more beds
Emphasising that the government is working ‘hard’ on ‘stopping the exodus’ of young people from Portugal, Pinto Luz also referred to the fact that for many years housing has been the ‘poor relation of the Welfare State’.
But while it has become ‘expected’ that minority parties seek to downplay this new government’s measures, antipathy was not anticipated when it comes to the nation’s landlords.
Last night, ANP, the national landlords association, was scathing: it said that the 30 measures announced do not cover the “truly important issues”, emphasising that with regard to urban rentals “which is what concerns us most, there is a lack of knowledge of what is going on”.
Association president António Frias Marques explained that, with regard to rehabilitation work, the government seeks to implement a reduction in VAT to the minimum rate of 6% – “but this already exists!”
As to the government’s assertion that it means to “restore confidence in renting with measures such as revoking the “forced renting” model of the last government, “there has never been the administrative machine to make this work” (this unpopular measure brought in by PS Socialists has never been enacted, indeed numerous borough councils said they would not agree to such a procedure).
Meantime, what is missing, in Frias Marques’ perspective, are measures to settle the issue of ‘old rents, from contracts prior to 1990, which continue to pay rents of below €50 that should, in his opinion, be transferred to the New Urban Lease regime, but which the previous government left exactly as before.
“We’re still like this: we still have around 200,000 rents of less than €50” (per month), he stressed – and this clearly means landlords are losing money.
Frias Marques adds that the new programme also has no clarification on the additional municipal property tax (AIMI) on vacant buildings, nor on homes in urban rehabilitation areas (ARU)
“The whole of Lisbon is considered an urban regeneration area and there, whether it’s a house or a shop, the owner is penalised brutally in terms of IMI. A shop that would have had to pay an IMI of €70, as it has a penalty, will pay €700 euros,” he explains.
“It’s one of those things that it would be good if someone looked at, because Lisbon is full of empty shops, and it’s not because the owner wants them empty, it’s because there really is no one who can afford to rent them”…
As for the issue of empty residential properties left to deteriorate, Construir Portugal also appears ‘silent’.
There are around 100,000 vacant homes in Lisbon, “but they are in such a state that no-one will go inside them, and the owner has to find the money to do the necessary work”, concludes Frias Marques.
For now, the government has intimated that it is open to other parties’ contributions and ideas. It has laid out its strategy, and wants to see it consolidated over the next 60 days in order to move forwards.
Source material: LUSA/ SIC Notícias
