The leader of the PAN list in this Monday’s European Parliament elections said it is important to invest more European support in social and income-supported housing, stressing that people must be a priority.
Pedro Fidalgo Márquez, who visited a house allocated to a former homeless person as part of the “Housing First” project of the Crescer association, believes that “putting a roof over people’s heads” should be the most important step, while “from there people organize their lives.”
The Housing First Project, launched in 2013, aims to provide housing for the chronically homeless and integrate them into society. At the moment, 140 houses have already been allocated.
The priority of providing housing to those who have not had it for many years cannot, according to the leader of the PAN list, be limited to Lisbon or even Portugal. This should be a European goal.
“We have often talked about different policies – migration, expansion, agriculture – and they are all very important, but we cannot forget about the social basis of people,” he said, adding that we cannot “make any transition without being fair and just.” it involves giving people a roof over their heads.”
There should be more funds, both national and from the European Union, to welcome people, he believed, acknowledging that support often comes through local associations.
“But we hear in associations that they often have to be creative in finding funding, while guaranteeing the right to housing and human dignity is the responsibility of the state,” emphasized Pedro Fidalgo Márquez, noting that it is therefore necessary to insist on the goal again.
“When we talk about the economy, we return to what we found in the social sphere, in the environmental sphere, even in investments: we must reduce the bureaucracy in European Union funds,” he emphasized.
“There needs to be more European support for this cause,” he also reiterated, recalling that the homeless cannot continue to remain a hidden population.
The PAN candidate took the opportunity to criticize Lisbon’s mayor, Social Democrat Carlos Moedas, accusing him of “trying to push people into neighboring municipalities to clean up their streets.”
The MEP candidate refused to give an estimate of the cost that should be put into solving the problem of homeless housing, saying one cannot “fall into the temptation and error of counting human lives” and defending that it is what is needed. is to “find solutions to problems and find funds that are poorly managed,” such as “fossil fuel subsidies.”
In November 2020, the European Parliament approved a resolution calling on member states to take action to end more than 700,000 homelessness by 2030.
Pedro Fidalgo Márquez did not dismiss the possibility that achieving this goal has become a utopia, given the delays, but stressed that “you have to have faith.”
“We must believe in utopias when we talk about giving people dignity, when we talk about [dar dignidade] Portuguese men and women, as well as migrants who are on the streets in Portugal,” he said.
This problem, he said, cannot even be considered “as a right or left matter,” but rather it should be an issue that “unites all efforts.”
PMC // ACL
Lusa/The End
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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