The coordinator of the Bloco de Esquerda (BE) accused the Government this Saturday of having “no solution” for the Housing crisis and of “no coincidence” between what was promised in the campaign and the priorities of the current executive.
“Write what I say, the PSD Government has no solution to lower the price of houses, there is no measure for the price of credits, the banks will continue to profit from the interest on housing loans, to lower rents there is no there are no measures, all that is allowed is more savagery in the rental market, when people are already so unprotected, no measures to contain external demand, no measures to contain local accommodation, no measures to contain hotels”, he pointed out Mariana Mortágua.
In Porto, in a street at Feira da Senhora da Hora, the bloc leader also accused the executive of wanting to push the middle class to the outskirts, leaving the city centers for “the rich and tourists”.
Faced with the Housing measures presented on Friday by the executive led by Luís Montenegro, the BE coordinator left some questions: “We try to combat [a falta de habitação] saying that a lot will be built. First, in how many years? People who are 30 years old today and want a family, or 40 years old, have to wait until they are 60 to have a house built who knows where, and in the meantime, how has their life turned out?”, he asked, considering that “this construction is not large enough to deal with housing problems”.
Mariana Mortágua also wanted to “draw attention” to “one thing that is said” in the Government’s program: “We are going to build houses on the large outskirts of cities and create transport for people to go to work”.
“The PSD’s plan is to have a middle class that inhabits overcrowded outskirts while the city centers are for tourism and the rich and then there is transport that takes people who live in the outskirts to serve tourism and the rich in hotels and restaurants and all the amenities that our cities can offer because they have become tourist postcards”, he criticized.
The bloc leader stated that this is a model that the party rejects. “We are going to have a powerful agenda with measures for housing that aim to lower rents, through rent ceilings, force the State to use public assets to serve housing, lower interest rates on housing loans, reduce banking profits, prohibit the sale of houses to foreigners who do not want to live in Portugal”, he said.
Asked whether the Government’s priorities were changed, Mariana Mortágua responded with the accusation that “the Government was not clear during its campaign about what its priorities were”.
“During the campaign the priority was to lower taxes on those who work, but in reality, the priority is to increase the profits of large companies and the Government will not waver in this measure and the same in Housing. During the campaign they spoke about housing, after the campaign, the priority is to give a green card to local accommodation and hotels and the entire construction industry”, he exemplified.
For the Bloc “the Government knows exactly what it is doing”, so the problem will be different.
“There is no coincidence between what you are doing now and what you said you were going to do and I think that the country will soon realize that neither the problem of housing, health nor wages will be solved by this right-wing government that there are no solutions now, as there never were in the past”, he concluded.
