The government wants to more than double the construction of social housing. Still, the existing construction program is not being carried out as it should. The problems are numerous, and there are not many solutions in sight.
“Difficulties remain at the level of public tendersmany stay desertsso there need to be companies to build the houses”, he tells Luisa Salgueiropresident of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities (ANMP).
The problem involves the 1º Direto project, which wants to build affordable housing to meet the needs of thousands of Portuguese families. However, the houses must be built by June 30, 2026otherwise they will lose the 100% financing provided for by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR).
But the constraints are not limited to public tenders. The Institute of Housing and Urban Rehabilitation (IHRU), “which has a fundamental role in monitoring processes and intervening in applications, has a structure without the capacity to respond to the demand for interventionswhich has greatly hampered the speed of these procedures”, says Salgueiro, who is also mayor of Pelotas.
The mayor also points out that “there have been many constraints in the drafting and approval phase of projects, visas from the Court of Auditors, among others”.
To allow the chambers to move forward with construction, the Government then proposed terms of responsibility and acceptance by the municipalitiesa measure that aims to overcome the IHRU’s lack of capacity and which was accepted by the ANMP, explains the DN. Salgueiro says that the terms are “acceptable, as what is at stake is the fulfillment of the PRR’s goals”.
The president of ANMP also says that, now, “it is up to each of the mayors analyze whether you are able to guarantee that your candidacy meets the conditions established in this term”.
According to the PRR released on November 20th, the allocation of 3229 million euros for housing is fully approved, but Only 684 million euros have still been paid.
Regarding the number of houses built or renovated to date, the ANMP “has neither the elements nor the competence to assess this situation”, says Salgueiro.
According to the IHRU monitoring platform, the budget contracted to date is 1614 million euros, for a total of 19,444 homes. According to the same source, Lisbon is the municipality that leads the financing contracts.
In September, the government announced that it intends to more than double the public supply of housing foreseen in the PRR and set the goal of building another 33 thousand houses by 2030, in a investment of 2800 million foreseen in the State Budget for 2025, reminds the DN. Even so, it is not yet known how to overcome the difficulties experienced so far in the application of the 1st Right, which put the construction of the 16 thousand homes promised by the government at risk.
