The PS will ask for parliamentary consideration of the law that introduced changes in local accommodation, with the aim of repealing them, considering that it is “excessively radical” and liberalizes the activity in the midst of the real estate crisis, it announced this Friday. He thus challenges the Government in a diploma published this week in the Diário da República that will come into force in November and that grants more powers to local authorities in the regulations of these units.
Speaking to journalists in parliament, socialist deputy Maria Begonha announced the presentation of a request for parliamentary consideration “on the Government’s measures that not only aim to liberalize housing again,” but also “repeal what the PS had done in favor of housing with Mais Habitaçao”.
Municipalities now have the power to decide on local accommodation
According to the PS MP, these changes mean that we now have “a local accommodation regime that completely returns to the past”.
“We hope that the Government can understand that it needed to moderate its proposal, we are not waiting for the Government to agree with us that it was necessary to break with these changes that they made,” he told reporters.
Hoping that with the public debate and the reopening of this issue “it will make the Government understand that it has a right-wing majority, but it does not have a majority in the country,” Maria Begonha said that the PS wants, with this parliamentary assessment, “the cessation of validity of these measures in their entirety.”
The PS deputy stressed that the socialists do not demonize the activity of local accommodation nor have they ever wanted to put an end to it. “One of the central measures of ‘Mais Habitação’ were the restrictions on local accommodation, which had one of the most liberalized regimes in Europe, which eliminated the supply of housing,” he argued.
In the midst of “a brutal real estate crisis”, the PS, when it was in Government, according to Maria Begonha, “what it did was understand that in the face of the disproportionate growth of local housing it was necessary to restore balance.”
“Pause to breathe and say: given the disproportionate growth, given the reality of the housing crisis, we needed to pause, restrict access to local accommodation, regulate access to create a balance between tourism and the right to housing “, said.
Underlining that the PS “prioritized the right to housing”, the deputy considered that these measures that the Government has now approved, citing the President of the Government, “break the restrictions” on local housing that the socialists had imposed, in addition to existing a “withdrawal of the decision-making power of the condominium owners.”
“Our goal is to start a debate that unfortunately will have few surprises, but with the hope that the Government can understand that this is too radical a measure to reopen and liberalize housing in the face of the real estate crisis,” he explained.
Source: Observadora
