The general outline of the reform was approved after the far-right party Chega unexpectedly abstained after having expressed its objections during the debate, while all left-wing parties voted against
International News via Reuters:
Portugal’s parliament approved on Wednesday, in the first reading, a contentious rental market overhaul aimed at speeding up evictions and ending rent controls on new leases in what the centre-right government hopes will encourage landlords to put more homes on the market.
The reform, criticised by tenants’ associations as “savagery”, sharply contrasts with developments in neighbouring Spain where the leftist government on Tuesday decreed a ban on evictions of vulnerable tenants until 2030, along with other measures, amid protests against evictions and rising rents.
The general outline of the reform was approved after the far-right party Chega unexpectedly abstained after having expressed its objections during the debate, while all left-wing parties voted against.
Portugal faces one of Europe’s worst housing crises, with rents for new leases nearly doubling since 2017 and becoming unaffordable for many households.
The government says more than 250,000 homes remain empty because legal uncertainty discourages owners from renting them out, but tenants’ groups argue the reform would only deepen the crisis.
“This reform proposal is sheer savagery,” Antonio Machado, head of the Lisbon Tenants’ Association, told Reuters, saying that it would “further skew the rental market in favour of landlords” and only lead to higher rents rather than alleviate the housing affordability crisis.
He also dismissed the government’s plans to speed up evictions as “pure opportunism”, arguing that cases involving tenants defaulting on rent are negligible.
Chega has said it wants to modify some provisions before the final vote that it said would create uncertainty for both tenants and landlords and called for “a more balanced solution”.
The country of about 11 million people has around a million rented homes, with more than 23% of leases over 20 years old.
The reform would speed up evictions by cutting the rent arrears threshold from three months to two months and allowing landlords to evict tenants who repeatedly pay their rent more than eight days late. It would also end a 2% cap on rent increases this year for properties rented out within the previous five years.
Reporting by Sergio Goncalves; editing by Andrei Khalip and Aurora Ellis
