Lisbon mayor calls for RRP for housing

Lisbon’s mayor, Carlos Moedas is to ask the European Commission if Recovery and Resilience funds can be deployed to build new affordable housing beyond the current execution deadline.

The mayor believes that the city should benefit from a Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) dedicated to the housing sector, which would extend beyond the deadline for the implementation of the country’s current PRR, scheduled for June this year.
Carlos Moedas recalled that new construction has declined significantly over the past decade, and that the €560 million of the RRP allocated to the municipality, currently 80% executed so far, are far from sufficient for the city’s real needs.

“We need more and building takes time. If all this would not have been possible without the EU, it is also true that from July onwards we will continue to need Europe” and therefore “I can, as mayor, ask the Member States that, just as we had the Next generation for Europe, we can have one for housing.

After June, what we have left is national support or finance from our own capital, and the city councils do not have the capacity to build everything needed,” he told the business daily Negócios.

The idea was supported during a joint press conference with the European Commissioner for Housing, Dan Jørgensen, who began by presenting in Lisbon, on January 30, the new European plan to promote affordable housing, which was approved in December by the European Commission.

SOURCE: Negócios
Photo: Ana Luísa Alvim/CML