Over 10,000 people have signed a petition for a rent cap and against evictions. Parliament will debate it
The Petition for Housing (Petição pela Habitação), which calls for limits on rents and for no one to be evicted until they have somewhere to go, has gathered more than 10,000 signatures. On 30 October its authors announced that they would hand the petition to parliament, the Assembleia da República (Observador). With that many signatures, MPs are required by law to hear the authors and to debate the petition in a plenary session (Jornal Económico). This does not change the law in itself: a debate does not mean the demands will be accepted.
The petition was started in November 2022 by a group of friends with no links to any party or civic organisation. Signatures were collected for almost four years on the Petição Pública website.
There are ten demands (Notícias ao Minuto). The main one is a rent cap that would depend on wages, the cost of living, the area and the condition of the home. Landlords should not be able to refuse to renew a contract if the flat is the family's only permanent home; the authors want to ban non-renewable contracts and make tenancies longer. In their view, eviction should be allowed only if the family has another permanent home in the same area, not just a place in a temporary shelter.
Some demands address problems that anyone looking for a flat runs into: they would ban landlords from asking for a large deposit, a guarantor, several months' rent in advance, unnecessary documents and details of tenants' private lives. The authors also want tougher penalties for those who pressure tenants to move out, empty homes to be compulsorily let as public and affordable housing, and tenants to be told in advance when their flat is being sold and given a real chance to buy it first.
Meanwhile, parliament is considering the government's rental bill. On 30 September it passed its first reading with votes from PSD, IL and CDS, with Chega abstaining; a date for the final vote is due to be set soon. The petition's authors believe the bill will speed up evictions and make tenancies less secure.
