The Liberal Initiative (IL) has announced that it is suspicious of the effectiveness of the Funchal City Council’s decision to suspend, for six months, the issuance of new Local Lodging (AL) licenses.
In a press release, IL opines that “this measure will not only not solve the housing crisis, but represents another episode of ineffective populism, aimed at masking the total absence of strategy by the city council and the Regional Government.”
For Sara Jardim, candidate of the Liberal Initiative for the Funchal City Council, “prohibiting new Local Accommodation licences is easy, but it doesn’t solve anything. It will not increase the rental supply. It will not bring down rents. It will not help families or young people to find a home. It is just another act of political illusionism to deceive the people of Funchal, that will create instability in the real estate market.”
The idea that landlords, prevented from engaging in AL, will suddenly put their houses on the rental market is pure fantasy, because, as long as the legal regime of renting is not thoroughly revised, no landlord will take risks. In Sara Jardim’s opinion, “between renting at any cost and without guarantees, or keeping the house closed and empty, the option is clear. And the high number of empty private properties demonstrates this.”
Thus, according to Sara Jardim, “the measure seems, above all, a distraction maneouver to cover repress the recent CORTEL episode, which demonstrated that the City Council and the Regional Government did not know how to foresee and regulate, in an adequate and timely manner, the activity of housing and construction cooperatives at controlled costs, preventing abuses that were perfectly avoidable.”
Instead of assuming responsibilities and presenting solutions, the municipality, which, after having blindly bet on Housing Cooperatives as the “miraculous” solution to the housing crisis, and having done nothing to regulate AL, has now discovered that it condemns, not condones, AL properties in “collective housing buildings.”
“The Funchal City Council and the Regional Government cannot, nor do they allow, to build, and do not know how to manage the increase in tourist supply and demand. Basically, we still do not have a single concrete measure to solve the housing crisis. There is no plan to mobilise vacant housing stock, to encourage long-term rental, or to give real guarantees to owners. Only popularity patches and loose measures, that undermine the confidence of real estate developers and owners, contribute even more to the contraction of supply and increase in rental prices,” reinforces Sara Jardim.
“The Liberal Initiative argues that the path is different: to review the urban lease regime, giving guarantees to developers and owners to put their houses on the rental market; Create incentives for the transition of houses from AL to rental for permanent housing; Placing vacant public properties on the market and at the service of citizens; and, increase the supply with more construction, more rehabilitation, less taxation and less bureaucracy.”
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
