A Housing Pact

The mayor of Oeiras, Isaltino Morais, recently launched a challenge to the Prime Minister and the opposition leader: if housing is as important as it has been stated by all, and so impactful in the lives of the Portuguese, it should be the subject of a regime pact between the two largest Portuguese parties (those who can truly govern).

The goal is to achieve, as fast as possible, the availability of public housing to 10%. Remember that Portugal has about 2% of public housing, against 14% of France, 24% of Austria or 34% of the Netherlands. This context has a corollary in the recent OECD study, which states that Portugal is the member state of that organization in which access to housing is more difficult. Hard but revealing.

Last week at Taguspark, the municipality of Oeiras organized the first international congress on public housing. It was an opportunity to call on the topic, listening to the best international experiences and giving voice to the true experts in the subject of housing. It is impressive how in Portugal you do not hear your best.

Despite the challenge launched by the mayor of Oeiras to be about the question that most worries the Portuguese, later this week a newspaper made headline that increased by 67% the requests for help paying income, and that families already cut in food to be able to support the house, this agreement is unlikely to be possible. The context of extreme political polarization in which it is currently lived, with PSD and PS tend to touch extremists more than to the center in agreements to govern, makes the whole issue a battlefield.

Portugal has been in charge of these regime agreements in the central issues of the country’s development. Interestingly, the need for them only has parallel in the time that passes without any agreement. In place of the agreements we have a true ‘legislative schizophrenia’: Come ps go to one side, come psd go to the other. Citizens and companies do not know what to count on. The country is postponing and the people stop believing. Even in the housing, in which the Costa Government advanced the way, the next government complemented and soon the PS criticized a reform that wanted little more than to densify what was being done.

In time of election campaign, those who were able to propose these agreements, in order to end the eternal national postponement, would be reinforced, and this actor would be the new refuge for stability.

Instead, we have a campaign that has only been truly enlightening about the maladjustment of the most extremist political forces. Missing on the interpretation of the world (it doesn’t even seem to live in this), in proposals and in the confrontational form as they do politics.

I wonder if they will ever speak beyond the cheerleader. If they truly speak to those who live the daily difficulties. By the way, they think beyond the cheerleader. If they thought, they would realize the scope of what Isaltino Morais proposed.