700,000 empty buildings in Portugal, but politicians are indifferent.
Portugal is one of the countries worst affected by the loss of residential housing, yet successive governments of whatever party seem uninterested. Lisbon Council has just approved two more hotels in the centre of the city. An empty state-owned barracks in Lisbon is in the process of being sold to be made into a 5* hotel.
Recent figures quoted in the Portuguese parliament by MP Maria Mortágua, the leader of the Left Bloc party, are that there are 47,000 empty houses in Lisbon, and over 700,000 in the whole country, not counting second homes. In Lisbon about 3,000 were identified as in a state of degradation and Lisbon Council has stated that 1840 were re-habilitated by 2024, but did not make clear how many of these belonged to the 2,000 owned by the Council itself as of 2021.
There is a housing crisis all over Europe, caused in part by governments rushing to develop tourism, at the expense of accommodation for local people. The profits go to the property owners, some of whom will be members of parliaments, and others will be multi-national investment funds. If one function of a democratic government is to ensure affordable accommodation for its residents, then this financialization of housing amounts to democracy for sale.
Spain has seen some of the strongest popular mobilisations against touristification, and the Spanish government has begun to respond, but in Portugal the governments, whether of centre-left or centre-right have so far ignored protests. And it was recently reported that the government has dropped the previous requirement for rural land converted to urban housing to have a minimum percentage classed as affordable. Instead they have adopted a formula that in the words of one newspaper report “opens the door to speculation”. A useful report on Housing Finacialisation in Europe can be downloaded here. And a free-to-watch video prepared by the group Left Hand Rotation can be accessed here.
One group, Stop Despejos (stop evictions), which is part of the European Action Coalition for Housing and the Right to the City, has been coordinating protests, and recently focused on the issue of a historic building which the government plans to sell to the private sector to make into a 5-star hotel.
This mad rush to privatize also means that the tourist is also being short-changed, by high prices and the fact that a lot of development projects make every city centre look similar.
I spoke to Marco Seabra for the Prisma about this and the wider problems of housing loss in Lisbon.
This interview is published in full with photos in The Prisma Multicultural Newspaper and can be accessed here: