“The Government and the PS parties to the right claim they will solve the housing problem, ignoring the elephant in the room, which are the 250,000 homes ready to inhabit and empty,” stated Mariana Mortágua during the closing session of the ‘Coimbra Mudar Mesmo’ Forum of Ideas and Proposals, part of the Left Bloc’s campaign for the Coimbra City Hall, led by former deputy José Manuel Pureza.
In her address, the Left Bloc leader recalled a study from the Institute of Housing and Urban Rehabilitation (IHRU), reported today by JN and Público, highlighting that 250,000 homes are not on the sale or rental market but are in good condition and ready for habitation, mainly located in areas of highest real estate pressure.
Mariana Mortágua asserted that “no one has the courage to look at the empty houses and say” how to resolve the issue, accusing the PS and right-wing parties of avoiding the topic and opting for a “rush forward” with the proposal to build more housing.
For the Left Bloc’s coordinator, this focus on more construction is pursued to secure “money for developers, money for speculation,” benefiting those who build more and those with “empty houses that continue to rise in value.”
“This is why no one touches the empty houses, no one talks about them as if they don’t exist. They are a ghost hovering over our cities. And it can’t be like this. If we want to solve the housing crisis, we will have to address the issue of empty houses in Portugal,” she emphasized.
Mortágua stressed the importance of identifying these empty houses, understanding ownership, and why they are vacant — whether it is an inheritance “stuck for decades,” a homeowner without funds for renovations, public properties, or investment fund properties that “bought houses in bulk.”
“For each of these situations, there is a public policy response,” she noted.
Instead, she pointed out, governments have neglected the sector’s issues and handed over choices to the market, arguing that the current housing crisis is a result of that approach.
On health, the sole deputy of the Left Bloc criticized the Government for presenting “the only plan” of outsourcing “emergencies, the SNS [National Health Service], the hospitals” to private entities.
“What the Government is doing is not providing a solution. It’s giving up. It’s showing the people that it doesn’t know how to do it, doesn’t know how to save the SNS, and therefore, will give up on it, will abdicate responsibility,” she argued.
When market solutions fail to resolve issues, right-wing parties, “because they lack a mental, political, theoretical, institutional framework and the willingness to implement or contemplate these public policies, have only one recourse, which is to blame the immigrants,” she said, suggesting that this is precisely what the current Government has done.
“It’s not a policy of strong politicians, it’s a cowardly policy, a weak policy, a policy of surrender,” she concluded.
