Ana Mendes Godinho defends support for housing as in tourism

A former Minister of Labor Ana Mendes Godinho defended today at the 1st National Summit on Local Housing (Porto) the creation of housing support mechanisms, as well as support lines for tourism in the past.

“ Why don’t we rethink our support and housing promotion mechanisms, as we did with tourism?” asked the Strategic Director of Tourism of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Ana Mendes Godinho, former Labour Minister and former Secretary of State for Tourism in the governments of António Costa (PS).

Ana Mendes Godinho, in the session he spoke about the theme “Local Accommodation, Tourism and Housing – How to understand the relations between tourism, housing and urban development?” that is taking place at the 1st National Local Housing Summit in Porto, recalled that in the past tourism has created “public guarantee lines even for entrepreneurs”.

“ Why don't we do this for people? Why don't we do a public guarantee program for young people, for example (...)? Why do we not do what we have done with tourism, lines of qualification of supply, for example, where we have said: is it a priority for the State to be putting up support instruments through banking? It was made with banking, for the placement and for investment in tourism, which was a priority ", pointed out.

For Ana Mendes Godinho, solving the housing crisis is now “a priority” for Portugal and we need to learn from the past and from what has been done in tourism.

The success of the simple support mechanisms for local housing in Portugal should be replicated to support and promote housing, the former socialist minister noted.

“ The fact that we said in 2008 that a housing permit could be used for local accommodation without any change in use was crucial to this. So here's a proposal: why don't we learn from this success and automatically? Existing tourist projects, or tourist projects that are ongoing, become affordable housing”.

Ana Mendes Godinho considers that it makes perfect sense to use tourist vision license in housing.

“ I think it might be a proposal that makes a lot of sense right now. In particular, in a context in which we no longer have a prospect of evolving tourist demand as intense as we have in recent years. ... At the moment when we are having huge difficulties in renting, it is against nature and it is against people that a young person is now gaining access to a house for sale.”