Lisbon's municipal housing strategy faces the city's "biggest challenge"

"Housing policies in large urban centers" were the subject of Carlos Moedas' speech at the "Housing the Big Cities" conference, organized by Rádio Renascença, in partnership with Lisbon City Council (CML).

After the housing cooperative launched recently, "the first since 1998", the mayor stressed, "we're going to launch five cooperatives in which people will be able to have the land for free and then buy their house", with values "of €150,000, €200,000, €250,000, to have their first house".

The "largest housing estate in the country", he recalled, with "more than 22,000 apartments", had "2,000 empty apartments", said the mayor of CML, 1,200 of which have already been rebuilt. "We're aware that there's no magic wand," but " we've already handed over morethan 2,000 houses and we're paying another thousand rents."

Lisbon, he added, has "the biggest project since 30 years ago, with the eradication of shantytowns", and recently signed a 560 million euro agreement with the European Union to tackle "one of the biggest housing problems in Europe".

The "Housing the Big Cities" conference in Lisbon, at the Galveias Palace, discussed the urban challenges faced by big cities, with the presence of various experts, the Minister for Infrastructure and Housing, Miguel Pinto Luz, and the Councillor for Housing, Filipa Roseta.