The Dark Side of Portugal’s Economic Success Story

The Dark Side of Portugal’s Economic Success Story

The country’s left-wing coalition has prioritized private investment and economic growth over public services such as housing, education, and forest fire prevention.

By Mickaël Correia

OCTOBER 3, 2019

Activists from Stop Despejos (Stop the evictions) and local families assembled outside the gray headquarters of the housing ministry in Lisbon on June 4, with placards saying, “There’s a housing crisis” and “No more property speculation,” and chants of “Homes for all!

A few days earlier, 10 police officers evicted Maria Nazaré Jorge, 83, from her city-center apartment. “She’d lived there for 40 years,” a representative of Stop Despejos told me. “The contract was in the name of her aunt, who died recently. The rent was 200 euros a month. Because property prices in the city center have rocketed, the landlord took the opportunity to evict her.”

After an hour, a small delegation was allowed inside. A ministry spokeswoman announced that the 83-year-old had been given temporary accommodation until a permanent solution could be found. The Stop Despejos representative told me, “She’s been depressed and disorientated since her eviction. She’s living on her own up in Castelo, the city’s most touristy district, where the only public transport is the 28 tram, which is crammed with holidaymakers.”

In 2012, Pedro Passos Coelho’s center-right government (in power 2011–15) amended the housing law in favor of landlords, making it easier to increase rents at the end of a lease and to evict tenants to renovate properties. Portugal, crippled by the credit crisis of 2008, had come under the control of “the troika”—an alliance of the IMF, the Central European Bank, and the European Commission—in 2011. The Commission made the deregulation of the housing market and the development of tourism conditions of its €78 billion bailout.