The National Youth Council rejected the statements of the president of the IHRU on the level of sacrifice that society is willing to make to have a home, considering them to be outdated from the reality experienced by young people.
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23/10/2026
by
Lusa
O National Youth Council has today revolted against statements by the president of the Institute of Housing and Urban Rehabilitation on the level of sacrifice to which the current society will be willing to have a home.
“The National Youth Council (CNJ) considers unacceptable and worrying the statements of the president of the Institute of Housing and Urban Rehabilitation (IHRU), according to which it does not know “if the current society is available for the level of sacrifice our parents and grandparents made to have a home”, said the youth structure in a statement.
For CNJ, these words are “failed by the reality” experienced by young people and transfer to a generation the responsibility of a housing crisis that is structural.
“ Portuguese youths already make sacrifices every day. They leave their parents' house around 30, even when they work. They adhere to life and family projects for lack of home”, they support.
The CNJ stressed that about one in three young people born in Portugal today live abroad, “many by necessity and not by choice”.
“We do not accept that the effort of a generation that studies, works and still cannot have a home be called into question. Young people do not need lessons about sacrifice. They need working housing policies and public authorities who know the reality they have an obligation to change,” said CNJ President Francisco Garcia, quoted in the document
The CNJ deplored the fact that this reading comes precisely from the person responsible for the public body whose task is to ensure access to housing.
“ Those who run public housing policy must come up with solutions, not call into question the effort of those who cannot access a house,” he said.
The CNJ advocates the increase in housing supply, with the strengthening of the public housing park as a priority, a discussion on the rent law that stimulates the placing of houses on the market without penalizing tenants and maintaining the current limits to advance rent and security.
The president of the institute responsible for housing, Benjamin Pereira, today admitted that expressions he used on the sacrifice capacity of young people were unhappy, stating that he did not intend to devalue the difficulties or suggest emigration.