Portugal housing crisis: ‘I’ll have to move back in with mum’

“The landlady’s been chasing me since 2018, she says she needs the flat – now there’s an eviction notice.”

Georgina Simões is a carer at a nursing home in the Portuguese capital Lisbon. She earns just above the minimum wage.

Her rent, at €300 (£262) a month, is low by the city’s current standards. But she still has to work two jobs to afford it. And conditions at the property are poor – she can’t shower because water leaks into the neighbours’ flat.

“I don’t leave because when I look for houses my salary isn’t enough, even to pay rent. Rent prices are above the wages we have in Portugal.”

Georgina’s circumstances are far from unique. Average rent in Lisbon is now just over €2,000, while the minimum wage is about €760.

Portugal is currently grappling with a severe housing crisis, triggered by an increase in foreign investment in property and a lack of affordable new homes.

But it’s not simply an issue of supply. Researcher and activist Rita Silva, who helped set up the housing movement Habita, says there are “more houses than people, but prices don’t go down”.

She adds that the current crisis – which has sparked numerous campaigns pushing for more affordable housing – has spread across the country over several years following the financial crisis of 2008.

The case involving Georgina, the carer, is now in the courts, and she hopes to remain at her property for a further six months. Her lawyer is trying to buy her that time.

What happens if she loses, I ask.

“I’ll be out on the streets,” she says. “I don’t have a chance, I don’t know what will happen. I just need a roof to sleep under – I spend my life at work.”

Joelsy Pacheco, meanwhile, juggles two jobs as a nurse on average for 16 hours a day, working at an intensive care unit at one of Lisbon’s main hospitals as well as at an NGO.

“Most of my wages go on rent, not to mention bills, food, transport,” she says. “With just one job, it would be almost impossible.”

Her lease will end later this year, and she is worried her rent will rise.

“Where would I go next?” she asks. “It’s likely I’ll have to move back in with my mum, far away from work – and I’ll have to restructure my entire life.”

Earlier this year, Portuguese comedian and activist Diogo Faro unintentionally became one of the faces of the affordable housing movement, after posting a video on social media about soaring rent prices in Lisbon.

Soon, his inbox was flooded with messages.

“There are divorced couples who can’t move out because they can’t afford it, which I think is brutal. Older people that are choosing between paying rent or medication, so they’re shortening their lives to have a roof,” he says.

As he received more and more stories like these, the comic got together with a few friends and started the movement Casa é um Direito (Housing is a Right).

His and other housing movements planned a demonstration that drew more than 30,000 people to the streets of Lisbon. The protests then spread to other cities, such as Porto and Braga.

“We’ve called the protests A House To Live, because people are desperate. They want a house to rest, play with their kids, to live,” says Diogo Faro, who sees this as just the beginning of the fight.

Lisbon’s mayor Carlos Moedas has described the housing issue as “the biggest crisis in our generation”.

He made the comment in April, while launching the construction of a new affordable rent development in Entrecampos, which will provide 152 new homes.

Schemes have also been set up to help those unable to afford the high rental prices, with local authorities offering to pay a third of the cost, says Lisbon’s housing and development councillor Filipa Roseta.

A third of Lisbon’s historical centre is unoccupied, according to geographer and housing researcher Luís Mendes, and recent cases suggest the state is making the situation worse.

When a few shanty houses were destroyed in March, eight families were left homeless and had to be sent to emergency accommodation.

“We’re talking about rent prices in Lisbon that are higher than some of the richest areas of Berlin, for example, where there’s been a rent cap. Not to mention the difference in wages,” says Luís.

“In Lisbon there are areas where an 80 sq m house is €1,200 a month. Well, that’s the average salary of a Lisboeta [Lisbon resident]. So we’re talking about prohibitive amounts – I would even say obscene.”

He says factors leading to the country’s current housing crisis include what he refers to as “touristification” – when the rise in popularity of holiday rentals diverts homes from residential use to tourism.

Areas like the historical neighbourhood of Alfama, known as the home of the Portuguese musical genre Fado, now have 60% of their houses in short-term rental use.

“What are tourists going to see? Each other?” jokes Diogo Faro.

Then there are the government measures aimed at attracting foreign investment through tax-free schemes for investment funds, digital nomads, and – most of all – Portuguese Golden Visas.

“Golden Visas allowed investors from outside the EU to get a resident visa in Portugal to invest, and that would work as a way into the Schengen Area.

“Often they would redo a house, but it would still be empty. Many times those properties would then be sold time and time again, and that created a distortion on the housing market and is one of the causes of the housing crisis,” says Luís.

As part of a new programme for housing, the government is putting a stop to Golden Visas and short-term rentals permits, as well as limiting rent increases to 2%.

For most, though, it’s too little, too late.