The mayor of Porto, the independent Rui Moreira, defended this Wednesday the need for municipalities to be able to apply the IMI on land, penalizing those that are unoccupied in the cities and where the construction of new homes can be promoted.
“The State must seek to place houses on the real estate market, but it is important that it does so, not with usurpation of the use of private property, but with fiscal measures“said Rui Moreira, at the closing of the conference “The future of housing”. For the independent mayor, municipalities should be able to apply the Municipal Property Tax (IMI) on the land, penalizing ““vacant land in cities, where new homes could be built”.
In tax matters, Rui Moreira also considered it important to ensure that, in terms of the IRS, “rents are not negatively discriminated against other savings applications” and that construction costs are reduced.
“Housing is a merry-go-round of taxes, fees and charges. There are a series of tax burdens that significantly increase the cost of both the construction and the purchase and rental of homes. Therefore it is urgent simplify and alleviate taxes associated with housingin order to encourage construction and facilitate the rental and purchase of a home,” he highlighted. Defending that there is no “uniform and rigid” solution to increase the supply of housing, the mayor maintained that the future of housing in Portugal “must necessarily go through” an increase in supply.
“Intelligent and innovative public policies are needed, capable of balancing centripetal and centrifugal movements in large urban centers. Otherwise we will not have socially inclusive and heterogeneous cities, where the constitutional right to access to decent housing is safeguarded,” he considered, regretting the rigidity of the legislation. For Moreira, Porto has been “an exception for many years in a country with a chronic deficit in the supply of public housing.”
The municipal company Domus Social manages 48 neighborhoods in the municipality of Porto, where social housing represents 12% of the built heritage and where around 30 thousand people live. “In 20 years, Domus Social has carried out an investment close to 350 million euros in the rehabilitation of the public housing stock municipal,” he noted, stating that more than half of the investment was made in the last decade.
The mayor also highlighted that the construction of social housing “has been clearly insufficient in recent decades” and that municipal affordable rental programs “have not achieved what was desired.” According to the information sent, between 2014 and 2023, the municipality assigned 4,056 homes, most of them T2. Last year, 303 homes were awarded, of which 195 were assigned to new homes. Despite this, the number of families waiting for municipal housing has been increasing since 2007, when there were 773 households.
In the last year they were 1,245 families waiting for a housemost of which are T1 (508 families) and T2 (502 families). According to the municipality, the average waiting time for housing is around three years, despite being “very volatile” and depending from one application to another.
Among the families on the list, 20% rejected a first accommodation proposal adapted to their composition and needs, “still waiting for a second housing option, located in the parishes they indicated as preferred.” According to the municipality, between 2014 and 2021, two out of every three housing applications were not accepted by Domus Social because they did not meet the criteria of the classification matrix.
Source: Observadora
