Lei Cristas is the jungle in housing

The housing crisis worsens and confronts more and more tenants with evictions, increase in speculative rent, termination of contracts to increase income or transformation of housing fires into tourist accommodation in the form of 39, local accommodation. We are in the middle of the year and already there are about 400 evictions only to the account of the national rental office, created by the Law Cristas to promote the opposite effect to the lease – the evictions.

The liberalization of the lease law approved by the PSD / CDS in the previous government – the expulsion trials – created the conditions for this situation. Faced with the pressure of tourism and the possibility of a speculative increase in rents, homeowners do not hesitate and the tenant has no protection.

The processes of gentrification and tourism spread from the center to the outskirts of cities. Foreigners who buy a house in Portugal to avoid paying taxes in their country or here, have increased the pressure on real estate. Prices for renting and selling homes reached unbearable levels, even for the Portuguese with average incomes.

The housing market was even more unbalanced with the Cristas law. Most leases now have a year and there is no reasonable limit to the rent increase at the end of this lease. The termination of the lease is not without reason, unless it is the will of the owner himself.

Lack of tenant protection has reached an unacceptable situation. What should be a right – the right to housing provided for in Article 65 – has become a mere commodity for business and speculation, despite its essential character for the minimum living conditions of any person.

Those who now say, like the good parties, that the liberalization of the law on leases should not be reversed because it is the state and not the private ones to have policies for housing, they are the same ones who end up investing in public housing and virtually all the existing housing stock in the private sector.

In relation to labor relations, the situation of imbalance between owner and tenant in housing is at the level of the jungle between the bosses and the workers at the beginning of the last century. The contracts have the duration that the owner understands, the value of the rent equitably, the expulsion is not without justification and after he was abandoned there is no social protection worthy of the name.

What happens with the sale of packages by Fidelidade? From about 2 thousand fires to a vulture fund, Apollo, is symptomatic of unprotected serious tenants. In this case, neither the tenants nor the exercise of the right of first refusal have access to it. If the transaction takes place, the tenants will be in the hands of the new owner, Apollo, who will seek to dispose of the houses to sell them at the most speculative price possible.

Faced with this housing crisis, a moratorium on evictions and termination of contracts until the approval of new legislation on leases. The PS rejected the Bloc's proposal in this sense, causing more and more tenants to undergo processes that, in practice, lead to deportation. Homeowners want free houses before new legislation can be approved.

The Bloc's Bill of Lease provides stability to lease agreements and limits on rent increases based on the heritage value of the fire. It will be voted in Parliament before July 18th. The PS rejected the Bloc's proposed moratorium on evictions and now opposes a quick approval of the so-called housing package.

It is necessary to support at the national level the movement of residents against expulsions and speculative rent increases, in support of a new law on leasing that provides more protection and protection. tenant rights, regulation, equity, stability and more justice to renting housing.