Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas (PSD) this Friday considered it “very serious” that the government had not consulted with the municipalities to determine the response to the housing crisis, criticizing the imposition and ban stance.
“Measures of this type cannot be like the centralism of a state trying to solve the problems of the people. We must solve them at the level of municipalities, at the level of modern cities, so the city will be the subject of the decision. housing problem, and this solution to the problem cannot be a coercion, a ban or an obligation,” said Carlos Moedas on the sidelines of the opening of a sports center in the Lisbon parish of Marvila.
On Thursday, Prime Minister António Costa (PS) unveiled a package to respond to Portugal’s housing crisis under the Mais Habitação program with five areas of action: increase the supply of real estate used for housing, streamline licensing processes, increase the number of houses on the rental market, fight with profiteering and protect families.
The Mais Habitação program has been approved by the Council of Ministers and will be discussed by the public for a month. According to the Prime Minister, the proposals will return to the Council of Ministers for final approval on March 16, after which some measures will still have to go through the Assembly of the Republic.
In response to the government’s statement, the mayor of Lisbon expressed “great oddity” that he had not been consulted.
“Today, housing is one of the biggest national problems, but it is a problem that must be addressed by local authorities. Now the government has not consulted with the local authorities and has not listened to them – the municipality of Lisbon, of course – and therefore it is very strange to see this whole package of measures without consulting the mayors and, in particular, the city of Lisbon, ”complained Carlos Moedas.
Mayor PSD highlighted the municipality’s intervention in response to the city’s housing crisis, indicating that the council is building over a thousand apartments and plans to help a thousand families struggling with paying rent through the Municipal Affordable Rent Grant (SMAA). ).
“We are really building solutions every day, such as, for example, cooperatives – we are going to launch five cooperatives – so all this needs to be done with municipalities,” he stressed.
The mayor of Lisbon said he did not understand how “measures of this magnitude” to respond to the housing crisis are carried out through a central state that “imposes and prohibits the life of mayors, enters the territory of mayors and says that it will ban local accommodation and this and that.”
“We can not [os autarcas] acknowledging that people manage our territory without consulting us, we consider this to be very serious,” he said.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
I’m Sandra Hansen, a news website Author and Reporter for 24 News Reporters. I have over 7 years of experience in the journalism field, with an extensive background in politics and political science. My passion is to tell stories that are important to people around the globe and to engage readers with compelling content.