The Prime Minister said on Saturday that it is up to each municipality to define the best local housing strategy, and that it is up to the government to create the legal and financial instruments to implement this strategy.
“It is not the state, it is not the government that is responsible for saying what is the best strategy for each of the municipalities, it is each municipality that is responsible for saying and defining what the best local housing strategy is,” said António Costa at the opening of the XXVIth Congress of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities (ANMP) taking place in Seixal, in the district of Setúbal, on the same day that protests taking place throughout the country demanding state intervention in the housing market.
It is up to the state to create the legal and financial instruments so that this strategy can be implemented, he said.
Saying that an “important journey” has been made in the field of housing, the Socialist highlighted the definition of a national strategy, the adoption of a fundamental housing law, the negotiations with Brussels for 2,700 million euros, now reinforced in the Recovery and Resilience (PRR), and the development of local housing strategies where each municipality can determine its own strategy, depending on its reality.
The General Manager recalled that the municipal reality is very diverse and that the way they ensure that all families have access to a decent home therefore largely depends on the municipal strategy.
There are municipalities that understand that this strategy should be based on the construction of new housing, others that believe that it should be based on promoting cooperatives and others that believe that this should be done through the purchase of housing that is already on the market. market, he emphasized.
Last week, Parliament reapproved, without changes, the Mais Habitação program, which was approved in a final global vote in July, with only the positive vote of the PS, in a reassessment following the veto of the President of the Republic.
The most controversial measures are the suspension of the registration of new local housing outside low-density areas and an extraordinary contribution to this business, the forced rental of houses that have been vacant for more than two years and the imposition of a limit on the value of new contracts and rental of homes already on the market.
The package also provides for exemption from capital gains tax for owners selling houses to the state, the end of the new ‘golden’ visas, an increase in the deduction for family members under the Family IMI, changes to the autonomous rate of property income and exemptions of taxes for owners who remove their homes from local accommodations before the end of 2024.
Source: DN
