BE accuses government of having ‘no solution’ to housing crisis

The coordinator of the Bloco de Esquerda (BE) accused the government this Saturday of the “lack of solution” to the housing crisis and of the “discrepancy” between what was promised during the campaign and the priorities of the current chief executive.

“Write what I say, the PSD government has no solution to reduce housing prices, there is no measure to reduce loan prices, banks will continue to profit from interest on housing loans, there is no means to reduce rents. No measures, everything that is allowed is more savagery in the rental market, when people are already defenseless, no measures to curb external demand, no measures to curb local accommodation, no measures to contain hotels,” he noted Mariana Mortagua.

In Porto, on Feira da Senhora da Ora, the leader of the bloc also accused the executive of wanting to push the middle class to the outskirts, leaving the city centers to “the rich and the tourists.”

Faced with the housing measures presented on Friday by the leader led by Luis Montenegro, the BE coordinator left several questions: “We are trying to fight [a falta de habitação] saying that a lot will be built. Firstly, in how many years? People who are 30 years old today and want a family, or 40-year-olds have to wait until they turn 60 to build a house in who knows where, and in the meantime, how has their life turned out?” he asked: given that “this the building is not large enough to solve housing problems.”

Mariana Mortagua also wanted to “pay attention” to “one thing said” in the government program: “We are going to build houses on the big outskirts of cities and create transport so that people can go to work.”

“The SDP plan is for the middle class to inhabit the overcrowded outskirts, while the city centers are for tourism and the rich, and then there is transport that takes people living on the outskirts to service tourism and the rich to hotels.” restaurants and everything else. amenities that our cities have to offer because they have become tourist postcards,” he criticized.

The leader of the bloc said that this is a model that the party rejects. “We will have a strong agenda with housing measures that aim to reduce rents by setting rent caps, forcing the state to use public assets to service housing, reducing interest rates on home loans, cutting bank profits, banning the sale of houses. foreigners who don’t want to live in Portugal,” he said.

When asked whether the government’s priorities had changed, Mariana Mortagua responded with the accusation that “the government was not clear during its campaign what its priorities were.”

“During the campaign the priority was to cut taxes for those in work, but in reality the priority is to increase the profits of large companies and the government will not hesitate on this measure, the same in the housing sector. During the campaign they talked about housing, after the campaign the priority is to provide green cards to local housing and hotels, as well as the entire construction industry,” he explained.

For Blok, “the government knows exactly what it is doing,” so the problem will be different.

“There is no match between what you are doing now and what you said you are going to do, and I think the country will soon realize that neither the problem of housing, health care, nor wages will be solved by this right-wing government that There are no solutions now, as there have never been in the past,” he concluded.