Difficulties in access to housing again take thousands of people to the streets this weekend in various cities of the country. In Lisbon, protesters ask the government to be concrete measures to solve the “biggest problem in Portugal”.
The organization and the movement They organize a protest on Saturday afternoon in Lisbon, one of several cities with demonstrations this weekend, for the right to housing and to demand more affordable income for the population.
“We are facing a situation of extreme severity in our country, even recognized by the European Union that recommended to the government control of incomes, has asked the government to limit local accommodation, and so far the government has done nothing, on the contrary,” says André Escaval, one of the Organization’s spokesmen and member of the door to the door, defending policies to the service of those who need houses to live.
The housing crisis, which affects the capital but also the generality of the country, is what motivates the demonstration, which has gathered, until 16:00, “broad hundreds” of people in Largo de Camões, indicated André Escaval, manifesting the conviction that adhesion “will grow along the way”.
“These people are here because they understand that the housing crisis is the biggest problem in Portugal, which needs to be fought,” says one protester.
“It’s not radical to say that the market is out of control”
Isabel Mendes Lopes, deputy of Livre, says that the problem of housing “is no longer a crisis, it is an emergency”, with “very serious consequences in people’s lives.”
“There are babies who don’t leave maternity hospitals because mothers have no home. We have a self -constructed housing on the outskirts of the cities again. Prices are completely unmarked for salaries in Portugal and continue to increase. We had the biggest increase in housing prices,” says Isabel Mendes Lopes.
The Free Deputy warns that “something has to be done now” and gives the example of the emergency fund for housing, a measure proposed by her party, which “has been approved but the government has not yet implemented it.”
“It’s 100 million euros to help people don’t lose their homes or help homeless people.”
Isabel Mendes Lopes considers that there are other measures that the country should apply, noting that the European Commission itself warned Portugal with the problem. “It’s not radical to say that the market is completely out of control,” says the deputy.
The European Commission alerted this month to Portugal, which “has seen housing prices increase sharply, as much as for sale and lease”, considering that the country must apply concrete measures to resolve the situation. Among them, the control of income, limits to local accommodation, use of unoccupied real estate whether public or private.
In the report, it is also stressed that housing remains “widely inaccessible to young people, vulnerable groups and, increasingly, to people with low and medium income.”
