Lisbon, Aug. 11, 2025 (Lusa) - The leader of the Portuguese Socialist Party advocated, in a letter sent to the prime minister, more partnerships between the state, local authorities, cooperatives, charitable institutions and economic agents to resolve the country's housing crisis, with a focus on modular construction, writes the Público newspaper on Monday.
According to the newspaper, after the issues of defence and pre-hospital emergency care, José Luis Carneiro sent a letter last week with proposals to the Social Democrat Luís Montenegro, divided into eight areas of action, to find solutions to the “urgent need for accommodation and affordable housing”.
Alongside financial support, the PS leader argues that the country should invest in the creation of a new industrial construction cluster, a sector severely affected by the crisis of 15 years ago, and says that the focus should be on innovation, such as modular and industrialised construction, allowing for “faster, more economical and higher quality solutions” and the better use of land.
Given that local authorities are best placed to understand the real needs of the general public and conditions on the ground, he says it is essential that the State ensures that they have “the financial, technical and human resources to effectively implement local housing policies”.
José Luis Carneiro argues that the investment effort should go further, with increased funding for existing programmes to promote renting, namely the Programme to Support Access to Housing (1st Right), the Financial Support Programme for Young People's Rent (Porta 65), the Affordable Rental Programme and the Controlled Cost Construction Programme.
At the same time, he suggests that a National Affordable Housing Construction Programme should be created to increase the public housing stock for middle-income families through the renovation, construction and acquisition of properties to rent at affordable prices.
After the creation of a National Emergency Housing Stock in 2021, the Socialist leader suggests to the prime minister that this be expanded to respond to emergency situations such as that of the shanty town Talude Militar (Loures, Lisbon region).
In his view, the emergency housing stock would serve to accommodate families in emergency situations while housing is built in a few months, for example through modular construction.
The socialist stresses that the National Student Housing Support Programme should also be a priority of housing policy, with investments defined in collaboration with higher education institutions and priority given to students with fewer resources who are studying away from their family homes.
He also says it is essential to “reform the institutional model for managing public housing policy”, intervening in the Institute for Housing and Urban Rehabilitation (IHRU) to reduce bureaucracy and strengthen the decentralisation of powers.
To this end, he points out that it is necessary to speed up the legislative process of the Building Regulations.
In addition to these concrete responses and the expansion of existing instruments, José Luis Carneiro argues that it is necessary to plan medium and long-term investments to give “predictability to housing policies and encourage industry”.
These measures provided by Carneiro to the Government will also be submitted by the Socialists to parliament shortly, either in the form of draft bills or proposals in the state budget for 2026.
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