The Lisbon Chamber wants to provide the police with 18 shared houses

A housing adviser at the Lisbon Chamber said on Tuesday she was “very concerned” about the response to housing developments from education, health and security professionals and said she intended to provide 18 houses so police officers could live together.

“The Chamber is very concerned about this issue. […]because they come to Lisbon to serve the city and don’t have a place to live,” Housing Councilor Filipa Roseta (PSD) told the Lisbon Municipal Assembly as part of the evaluation of Chega’s recommendation “to promote housing for health, education and law enforcement professionals” .

Filipa Roseta said that one of the municipality’s responses to these professionals is the Municipal Affordable Leasing Grant (SMAA), in which the council pays 1/3 of the rent depending on the fulfillment of a number of requirements, noting that one of the changes in the purpose of this support was that to allow the contracts concluded this year, specifically for laid-off workers.

The housing council member recalled that applications were submitted to the SMAA between Dec. 29, 2022, and Tuesday at 5:00 pm, and there are records of “around 800 applications,” noting that executive availability allows up to 1,000 people to apply. is supported in the payment of income, therefore, a new stage of providing this support is provided for in the summer.

One of the requirements to access SMAA support is that the level of effort the household incurs in paying the monthly rent “equals or exceeds 30% of the current gross monthly income earned by all members of the household on the Application Date.”

“This is a big support for those who have been displaced,” said Philipa Roseta, given that the SMAA is also designed to meet the income of these professionals, and the award is “not a draw”, unlike affordable income contests. Program.

Another housing councilor proposal, which she will soon present at a meeting of the city council executive, is the conclusion of a protocol between the company Gebalis – Gestão dos Bairros Municipais de Lisboa and the social service of the Public Security Police, in which the municipality intends to provide 18 houses in order to “three dozen police officers could live in the capital together.

With regard to the Chega Municipal Group proposal, which asked the city council executive to explore the possibility of “reserving some of the resources available in the Lisbon City Council to allocate support for housing development in Lisbon for education, health and security”. , the recommendation was rejected by votes against BE, Livre, PCP, PS, PAN, MPT and MP for Cidadãos Por Lisboa (elected by the PS/Livre coalition), abstentions from PEV, Iniciativa Liberal (IL) and CDS-PP and votes in favor of PSD, PPM , Alianca and Chega.

In the presentation of the proposal, Chega MP Bruno Mascarenhas highlighted the role of these professionals who carry out “missions of great importance to local communities” and warned that “due to the rising and exorbitant cost of housing” there is “pressure to leave these professionals due to serious difficulties in finding a home in Lisbon that is compatible with their family budget.”

“We are seriously at risk of losing more and more professionals, which will lead to an irreversible degradation of public services and a clear damage to the quality of life of the inhabitants of Lisbon,” said MP do Chega.

From the PSD bench, MP Carlos Reis justified the vote in favour, agreeing that “the chamber is looking into the topics” but felt that Chega’s recommendation “is a bunch of nothing, especially with some intellectual dishonesty”, explaining that the proposal does not portray the real state of the city. forgetting that “the municipality already has differentiated solutions for some professional classes, and the biggest omission concerns government intervention.”

“Once again it is clear that in fact Chega is a useful idiot of this government,” the Social Democrat accused.

IL MP Angelique da Teresa also pointed out “a similar incompetence of the state” in response to the housing problem and emphasized that Chega’s proposal is related to the government, “otherwise it is without a doubt nothing more than a letter of good intentions, but without any materialization.”