The president of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities (ANMP), Luísa Salgueiro, considered today that the adjustments that the Government proposes to the Mais Habitação intervention plan are “positive evolutions” and that they meet the demands of the local authorities.
“We have been looking and we have seen that there are positive evolutions, towards the Association’s demands. Others haven’t, but we haven’t closed the document yet, and we still have a few more steps to take,” he pointed out.
At the end of a meeting of the directive council, that took place this morning in Coimbra, Luísa Salgueiro informed that ANMP has analyzed the new law proposal, that the Government sent last week, and that includes changes to the measures of the Mais Habitação intervention plan.
Although this issue has been on the table, ANMP has not yet issued its opinion on the new version of the document.
“We have not voted and cannot communicate the position today. We will still have to hold a meeting and it should take another week to close the matter,” he revealed.
On March 21, ANMP issued an unfavorable opinion to the first bill of the Mais Habitação package.
In the document, ANMP listed a dozen positive aspects of the Mais Habitação package, as well as nearly two dozen critical points and suggestions for improvement.
According to ANMP, “the instruments foreseen in the Mais Habitação (More housing program) package imply a significant reinforcement of municipal attributions in the housing area”.
“Without making provision for the corresponding financial reinforcement to meet the resulting costs, whether with the management, maintenance, rehabilitation, and increase of the respective housing parks, or with the implementation of procedures that are intended to ensure the supervision and execution of some of the proposed measures, it will be impossible to overcome the crisis situation and housing shortage that we are experiencing, rebalancing the supply and access to housing in compliance with Article 65 of our Constitution,” reads the March 21 opinion.
Today is the last day to apply for the IHRU’s lottery for 27 units of affordable rental housing.
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