More than 150 people protest in Leiria against housing crisis

Mais 150 people gathered today in the space of the ‘light source’ in Leiria, protesting against the cost of living in Portugal and the difficulty in having a house.

In addition to the posters displayed, the spokesperson for Leiria from the Casa para Viver platform, António Gonçalves asked “how will the young people build a family if they are sharing a room?”

Therefore, it is necessary to “be on the street demanding answers”.

“ It's not on social media and it's not distilling hate. We must not be afraid to fight, we must have solidarity with those who are in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra or Braga ", reinforced, criticizing the police action on the camped, considering that it was used “excessive violence” in a peaceful demonstration.

The protester also called on all citizens to “come out” to “fight for their rights”.

In statements to journalists, António Gonçalves, stressed that “people are on the street for housing, for the cost of living, for everything they have suffered in recent times”.

The Portuguese face “a problem not only of housing”, but also of “police violence in peaceful demonstrators”.

“ And we are now faced with something very negative that haunts us, called the State Budget”, he added.

According to the spokesman, this new concentration, the second one a week later, intends to pass on the message that the ‘fight must be decentralised’.

“ We must be demanding that housing solutions not only apply to Lisbon or Porto, apply to whole Portugal and to realize that this is not a dormitory city. We are not asleep”, reinforced.

António Gonçalves noted that “there are people who live and work here and cannot pay their bills at the end of the month and the government is not interested in solving these problems”.

Leiria is “in the street to demonstrate that here” also fights, he stressed.

“Leiria was from the districts at national level that had a higher price increase. And all the people here today will say exactly the same. We are talking about T2 apartments in the peripheral parishes – I do not like to use that term – of values, for example, 850 euros”, he revealed.

They are houses “with a living room and a kitchen together, with 40 square meters, for example, built in haste without great quality”, added António Gonçalves

“ We're talking old apartments, in very complicated conditions, where maybe two, three families live downtown. During the storm, Kristin, I volunteered and saw the situations in which people lived ", found.

The protester, who lives in a rented house, admitted that he was “lucky to make a lease still in 2021, where prices were already high”, but he first paid 550 euros of rent.

“ Now, when I go out, it had already been increased several times and is already 70 euros higher than the original ", said, by saying that the next tenant will already pay a value of 850 euros.

António Gonçalves stressed: “I don’t think the salary of an average Portuguese has increased by 300 euros in the last 5 years.”

For this reason, people “have to fight”, because “Portuguese knows that they do not live well in Portugal”, where “two thirds of Portuguese receive 1,000 euros or less”.

Between demonstrations and so-called camped demonstrations, with hundreds or thousands of protesters, the current protests against the housing crisis began in Porto on October 10 and expanded to Lisbon, but they have also motivated concentrations in other cities, days after the parliamentary approval of the new rental law, now under discussion in the specialty.

The initiatives, promoted by civic movements and spread across social networks, demand measures that respond to the crisis in the sector, the control of the prices of essential goods and fuels and defend taxes on the extraordinary profits of large companies in the banking sector.