Parliament approves PS proposal to expand support for student accommodation

This Wednesday, Parliament generally approved a PS bill to extend student accommodation support for displaced middle-class students, with PSD and CDS voting against and Chega choosing to abstain.

The proposal was drawn by the PS into a debate scheduled for today’s BE plenary session on the theme “The Good Life: A Home to Live in and a Time to Live in” and in the end it was the only one to receive general approval.

They voted against the two parties supporting the government, the SDP and SDS-PP, but thanks to Chegi’s abstention and a vote in favor of the other parties, the Socialists’ bill to extend support for student housing for displaced middle-class students. was generally approved and is now being submitted for specialty review.

It was one of five proposals that Pedro Nuno Santos announced during the debate on the government program in early April, and the only thing missing is Friday’s discussion of cutting the VAT on electricity to combat energy poverty.

During the debate, PS deputy and Socialist Youth (JS) secretary general Miguel Costa Matos pressured the remaining parties to endorse the socialist proposal, stressing that “party victories” were not at stake and highlighting some of the previous leader’s measures.

Through Chega, parliamentary leader Pedro Pinto accused the PS of sending young people into exile and doing nothing for the younger generation.

The two deputies also exchanged arguments about the emigration of young people from the country: the socialist claims that it has decreased in recent years, and the Chegi deputy refuted this statement.

Thanks to the bill, it was possible to establish “the legal regime for additional residence, extending it to displaced non-scholarship students from households with annual incomes lower than those included in the IRS Group 6 limit.”

According to a PS source who spoke to Lusa, thanks to this project, displaced students who are not receiving government scholarships for higher education and whose families have income up to the IRS sixth bracket will now be able to apply for accommodation in university residences and will receive a housing allowance that will higher if there are no places in residences.

The Socialists’ goal is that the current regime in place for scholarship holders can be extended to students from middle-class families, estimating that this measure would have a budgetary effect of 11 million euros, according to the macroeconomic scenario of the electoral program.

In addition to providing relief to middle-class families, the same PS source believes that this measure is responsible and consistent with the increase in supply, taking into account the work that is underway across the country in the National Placement Plan for Higher Education Persons.

The CoP seeks to ensure the stability of this support and, to this end, proposes the creation of a legal regime to replace what is currently determined by the order.