Lisbon mayor Carlos Moedas has taken one of the government’s least popular ideas to fix the housing crisis, and challenged it to “show by example”. The planned ‘vacant property grab’ is so “radical an invasion of the domain of private property” that political leaders should first rent out the vacant properties that the State has under its control. This is the gist of feeling echoed over social media and now the subject of a public petition. Said Moedas today, “impositions and prohibitions” will lead nowhere: the government has to have public support behind it, and this can only come from ‘leading by example’… The number of properties owned by the State and municipalities, and left to abandon, has become a new ‘scandal’ as rents and property prices rise almost everywhere beyond the reach of many working citizens.
