Government announces 31,700 public houses completed with PRR funds

Com the barrier “more than fulfilled, exceeded”, the government notes that the number “means more 5,700 compared to the initial goal set in 2021, by the socialist government, to provide 26,000 housing responses to families living in unworthy conditions”.

In a statement, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing, led by Miguel Pinto Luz, even complains that “without the strategy adopted by the Government for housing, defined in Construct Portugal, would only be completed today about 16,500 fires”.

This is because, in April 2024, when he took office, the current government found “a level of implementation incompatible with the European calendar and an underfunded programme, with EUR 1.4 billion, insufficient value to meet the target of 26,000 dwellings”.

In order to meet the target, the funds for the 1st Law were increased by EUR 2,800 million, through the State budget, which added to the funds of the RRP.

With the measures of the “Building Portugal” package, presented in May of that same year, “it was possible to unlock around 59,000 applications for the 1st Law programme” and “a budget increase of € 790 million was also approved to meet the goal,” the government claims.

“ We inherited a goal that was at risk and an underfunded program”, pointed out the ministry, reaffirming the commitment to “ensure a decent housing for all families”, through the performance “on various fronts and dimensions, with a set of instruments that work in an integrated way to meet the challenge of housing”.

A fortnight ago, the PSD-CDS/PP government announced the delivery of a total of 28,000 new public houses and, at that time, said that, in addition to these, 12,000 more houses “are in advanced work, it is expected that, by December 2026, it will be possible to achieve a total of 40,000 houses”.

In the statement released today (in which it talks about completion and non-delivery of houses), the Government lists in detail the measures it has adopted in relation to public housing, support for young people, licensing, construction sector, lease, territory and soil, private supply and public-private partnerships, tax incentives.

And it is important that there is a review of several laws – Legal Regime of Real Estate Mediation, Legal Regime of Cooperatives and Legal Regime of the Administration of Condominiums, Construction Code and legislation on seismic vulnerability – and the electronic platform of urban procedures (Licencia) and the digital notebook of the building.

According to the Government, by 2030 around EUR 9 billion will be mobilised for public housing.