This Sunday, the BE coordinator accused the PS of having “aggravated” the housing problem by asking for a “social majority” to appear next Saturday for proposals such as a ban on the sale of houses to non-residents. -residents.
“The PS has not only not solved the problem [da habitação], because it has irresponsibly aggravated the problem by making announcements that it then fails to implement,” criticized Mariana Mortágua in statements to the Lusa agency in Alameda, in Lisbon, where BE this week opened a new ‘billboard’ with the message: “Ban selling houses to non-residents, radical? It is radical that the salary does not reach the house.”
The BE coordinator gave the example of the ‘More Housing’ programme, which was confirmed in Parliament on Friday, because it is a ‘series of measures that have ultimately proven perverse’ because they have been announced and not yet implemented.
“The government decided to announce that it would limit the increase in rental prices on new contracts, but did not immediately put this into practice: it made the announcement in February 2023 and this measure has not yet come into practice. The result is that new contracts have increased by more than 10% as landlords anticipated this freeze,” he said.
Similarly, Mariana Mortágua criticized the announcement of the end of the ‘golden’ visas, noting that after this announcement, applications for this type of visas “skyrocketed by 50% in Lisbon and by more than 200% in Porto”.
For the BE coordinator, “this means that the government’s own announcement, saying it will end ‘golden’ visas, but not abolishing ‘golden’ visas, has caused a rush for visas.”
“There are measures that cannot be announced in time, they must come into effect immediately,” he insisted.
Given this scenario, Mariana Mortágua said he hopes that at the demonstration called for this Saturday by the ‘Casa para Viver’ movement, a ‘social majority’ will speak out in favor of BE’s housing proposals, such as the ban on the sale of houses to non-residents .
The bloc leader mentioned that this measure was adopted in Canada, “which has a liberal government”, and is justified by statistics from the Bank of Portugal, according to which 1.7 out of every ten euros in housing transactions come from non-residents, the Plus the fact that “houses bought by non-residents are 95% more expensive than houses bought by residents”.
“This means that the Bank of Portugal wrote in its 2022 report that non-residents drive up the price of houses because they have much more disposable income,” he said, adding that the phenomenon has a particular impact in Lisbon and in the port.
In addition to this proposal, BE also supports imposing ceilings on rental prices, “determined in each location and for each type of property, with fair values, but compatible with salaries”.
As for bank repayments, the party proposes to limit the increase in credit effort to 2% between the value that existed before the interest rate increase and the current value, under penalty of the bank being forced to renegotiate the credit. .
‘We are sure that there are a majority of people who agree with these proposals because they see their consequences every day: every time they look at a beautiful building, where they could have a home to live in to live in, they know that that house is not like that. for your wallet, and it never will be,” he said.
Mariana Mortágua argued that the Portuguese are not “destined to be spectators of a city” and that “people with incomes in Portugal should be able to buy and rent houses in Portugal”.
“The priority must be the right to housing and we believe it is this majority that will take to the streets on September 30 to fight for proposals that make a difference,” he stated.
Source: DN
