During the presentation of the Guide for Preparing Municipal Housing Charters, Carlos Humberto de Carvalho emphasized that “solving housing problems is only possible with local governance,” but warned that it cannot bear “the responsibility without the means to respond.”
An advocate of the “metropolitan municipality, to better respond to the metropolitan scale,” he expressed feeling more supported today by “some mayors” who “push for going further” within the AML entity.
“The Lisbon Metropolitan Area lacks competencies; we have pursued this path because the municipalities wanted to, recognizing it couldn’t be done alone,” he praised, lamenting the “impossible bureaucracy and formalism” hindering progress.
Participating in the discussion on “Housing and Territory: the Metropolitan Dimension,” architect Helena Roseta called for “a territorial and metropolitan vision,” acknowledging “what a home represents for each family and individual,” as well as the individual and local scale.
“Unfortunately, we lack metropolitan power, and we must strive to go further,” she urged, praising the initiative of the Guide for Preparing Municipal Housing Charters and calling for “a long-term perspective” and mobilization against bureaucracy, using existing tools.
“Housing is one of the areas that makes us most vulnerable if we cannot address it urgently,” noted João Pedro Costa, president of the Center for Research in Architecture, Urbanism and Design, also a speaker at the initiative.
Highlighting “the re-emergence of shanty towns” and “the hot-bed phenomenon,” he acknowledged “the problem is much more complex today,” stressing that “all responses are needed” and collaboration between public, private, and cooperative sectors is essential.
“We lack action; it’s time for action, to gather efforts, ideology is not central to the housing issue, we must give space to all solutions and analyze opportunities,” he asserted, considering that the launched guide could assist in this regard.
At the session’s opening, architect João Paulo Lopes introduced the Guide for Preparing Municipal Housing Charters as a planning tool stemming from knowledge of local realities, now meant to guide action, calling for a “consistent and balanced housing policy.”
The three volumes of the Guide for Preparing Municipal Housing Charters are the result of two years of work and aim to support municipalities and municipal technicians.
