Rising house prices and inflation are creating a new type of homeless person in Portugal, people socially integrated who are pushed into exclusion, warn associations that deal with this problem and poverty.
“Take a walk around Gare do Oriente, Saldanha, Martim Moniz or other streets in Lisbon (…) and you’ll hardly find drug addicts or alcoholics” living on the streets, as was the profile of the homeless in the past, Luís Filipe Macedo, head of the Remar association, told Lusa.
Now they are “healthy people who are fighting for their lives”, he added.
On the eve of the presentation in parliament of the National Strategy for the Integration of People Experiencing Homelessness (ENIPSSA) 2025-2030, the leader recognizes that there are more and more cases on the streets.
“We’ve noticed that the situation of the homeless doesn’t improve, it doesn’t decrease. There are more and more people on the streets, in unusual places,” he said, giving the example of his association’s meal service.
“We always go out with three tureens of soup and 250 snacks and we give them away until we run out, but many people don’t get a meal,” she explained.
For Luís Filipe Macedo, “this problem is increasing, with a new profile, more emigrants and younger people”, and “it’s hard to see how some people are living in some places in Lisbon”.
He pointed to rising house prices and the cost of living as the main factors behind this phenomenon.
“Some may even have a job or odd jobs, but they can’t afford a house and are living in tents,” said the Remar leader.
For her part, Sandra Camara Pestana, head of the Cais association, recalls that her association’s vocation is to accompany reintegration processes, providing places to live and giving support in finding a job.
Despite this, Cais has noticed that there are more cases of homelessness and social exclusion, some of them former users who are now facing economic problems.
“People work to survive” and “live in limbo”, he said. “If a couple becomes unemployed, it’s a horror and life hangs in the balance,” he added.
“The inflationary measures we’re experiencing, the lack of housing. If people don’t have housing, they don’t have a stable life and without that they can’t get a job,” she said.
In Porto, the association supported “a couple who went to work every day and lived on the street”, a “situation that is not sustainable”, said Sandra Camara Pestana.
In the cases identified, the Remar association tries to “take them in”, providing them with accommodation and other care to help them integrate.
But “they have to want it”, stressed Luís Filipe Macedo.
At the end of 2023, the coordinator of the National Strategy for the Integration of Homeless People (ENIPSSA), Henrique Joaquim, admitted an increase in the number of people living on the streets.
The most recent data, referring to 2022, indicated that 10,700 people would be homeless in 2022.
The Alentejo, the Lisbon Metropolitan Area and the Algarve were the regions with the highest proportions, respectively 2.13, 1.60 and 1.51 homeless people per thousand residents.