Today, Lisbon tops Europe’s housing unaffordability ranking
Unaffordable house prices and rents are a continent-wide concern. Over the past decade, house prices in the EU rose by 50% on average, and rents by 18%. Housing policy has favoured those who invest in homes at the cost of those who live in them. Across Europe, property has become a driving force of inequality.
During that same period, Lisbon has undergone a dramatic transformation, from one of the most affordable capitals in Europe to one of the most unaffordable. House prices rose by more than 200% in its central historical district. This trend is extending to the national level. In 2015, Portugal ranked 22nd out of 27 EU countries for housing unaffordability. Today it ranks first!
To understand how Lisbon reached this point, we have to go back to the 2008 global financial crisis, after which the country embraced a strategy of aggressive liberalization, in order to entice foreign real estate investment.
Rental laws were relaxed, making evictions easier and tenancy agreements shorter. Generous tax-incentives were introduced for non-resident buyers, including the controversial ‘golden visa’ and ‘non-habitual resident’ programmes. At the same time, both the hotel industry and the short-term rental sector were promoted.
In the historic centre of Lisbon, Airbnb rentals have reached dramatic levels: half of all homes hold a short-term licence, and in the most tourist-saturated neighbourhoods, that figure even climbs to 70%.
When measured against the city population, this number represents a density 6 times higher than in Barcelona and 3 times higher than in London. Meanwhile, the number of hotels has tripled – from around 100 to 300 – and there already exist approved plans for 50 more.
These changes happened in a global context of low interest rates in which affluent people increasingly turned to housing as a place to park their savings. Storing of wealth in housing drives up prices; the medium of transactions made by foreign buyers in Lisbon is 80% higher than the price paid by domestic buyers, whereas the country stands out for its overvaluation of house prices by 35%.
The result is a city that welcomes foreign wealth but excludes many of its own citizens, prioritizing the desires of the global consumers over the needs of the local community. Beyond an increasing number of tourists, central Lisbon is now primarily occupied by a transnational class of mobile young professionals and digital nomads from other countries, whereas local middle-class people are being pushed out to the suburbs or forced to adapt by renting rooms instead of apartments.
At the same time, a growing share of the income – half of the Portuguese taxpayers earn less than 1000 euros a month – is being consumed by housing costs, deepening social inequality. Citizens in Lisbon spend the highest percentage of their salary on housing in the EU.
Contrary to the neoliberal myth that the market alone can meet the needs of the population, Lisbon offers another example of market failure, dividing society and fuelling the popularity of far-right parties like Chega.
‘ We’re running the risk of having the working and middle classes conclude that their democracies are incapable of solving their biggest problem,’ the mayor of Barcelona recently declared.
Happy reading Boas leituras (Pic PtRes/Lusa)
Health Services disease: easy diagnosis, difficult treatment
Is the National Health Service still sustainable?
60% of private deliveries are by Caesarean section, twice as many as in the SNS.
43 public hospitals on the brink of collapse.
More than two thousand family doctors are out of the SNS.
Health Centres lack almost everything.
Public hospitals suffer from ‘persistent underfunding.’
Centre-right government doesn’t want doctors to be hired by private agencies.
More than half of SNS doctors also work in the private sector.
The vast majority of foreign doctors are working in the private sector.
Private hospitals break records with over 10 million consultations per year.
Mother loses baby after visiting five hospitals.
Infant mortality increasing in Portugal.
Infant mortality peaking since 2019. Unguarded pregnancies may explain.
Why do SNS professionals run away?
2,700 doctors leave Portugal for abroad.
In Portugal most people die in hospital, relatively few at home.
Portuguese medical specialists are among the lowest paid in Europe.
Health workers are depressed.
Number of nursing graduates below the EU average.
Order of Nurses warns of the ‘escape’ of nursing professionals from Portugal.
No progress in nursing careers.
Almost 1 million waiting for hospital appointments.
Over 7500 victims of cancer await critical surgeries.
Diagnosing the evils of the SNS (National Health Service) in Portugal is easy because the holes are in plain sight. The SNS used to be outstanding when created almost fifty years ago. Although it still maintains some excellent services, it has been degrading for not having adapted to a different society, states professor António Sarmento in the newspaper Expresso.
The price of health care has increased exponentially as a result of medical progress with technical and pharmacological innovations, many of which without a clearly demonstrated cost-benefit advantage.
There is an increasing stimulus to consumption in health care whose main focus is profit, as if health were a commercial activity. To enhance this demand for health care are the exaggerated expectations in the possibilities of Medicine.
It is unacceptable that private clinics try to condition the salary of doctors to the number of tests requested. There are even clinics announcing the offer of free radiographs as a gift for procedures performed.
But are public hospitals a paradise of ethics and virtue? Of course not. It is enough to look carefully at the perversion of some programs of the so-called additional production in some hospitals or at the administrative pressure that threatens good medical practice and demotivates the professionals.
What will be the solution? There seems to be only one way: a structural reform of the SNS, facing it as an imperative of national interest. There are general principles underlying any global reform of the health system
Health cannot be a business case like selling cars, apartments or commodities. Its merely commercial essence cannot be accepted, reducing health to a consumer good and the patient to a customer
There is only one Medicine: the one centred on people!
Promotion of health literacy should be based on Science, including universal concepts of dignity, compassion and beneficence, not forgetting respect of those who take care of others.
Cooperation with Public Health Services of the EU member states is warranted for the solution of problems that are common to all.
It is high time the country finds financing mechanisms that allow sustainable, accessible and equitable health for all.
Enjoy your week Aproveite a sua semana (Pic Público/PtRes)