"In the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, more recent data that is not yet public [...], shows we had around 3,400 people without a home and around 1,500 sleeping on the streets", said Henrique Joaquim, at a meeting on housing in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (AML) "Challenges that Need Solutions", which took place in Cascais, district of Lisbon.

Homeless people are effectively on the streets or in similar places, while citizens without a home "already have [institutional support] accommodation, but they don't have the resources to be able to pay for it", explained the person in charge, noting that in the city of Lisbon alone there around "around 900 people living in rented rooms".

Regarding current challenges, the executive manager of the National Strategy for the Integration of Homeless People (ENIPSSA) defended the need for: "Houses to prevent people from reaching the streets, houses to remove people from the streets and houses to that the people we are managing to remove do not return to the streets".

Highlighting the effort that AML municipalities have made to combat this phenomenon, Henrique Joaquim said that, "despite resources being few", there are results, with the removal of people from the streets and with prevention to prevent them from returning to be in this situation.

The person in charge highlighted the Lisbon City Council's "Housing First" model and the response of the municipality of Almada by taking advantage of a vacant building to house homeless people, as well as a pilot project in Barreiro with an alert system to signal the city hall of situations at risk of eviction, which "exceeded one hundred" in two months.

The official highlighted that the AML concentrates "around 60 to 70% of homeless people in Portugal".

"It exists in the Porto Metropolitan Area, it exists in the Algarve region, but the significant percentage of homeless people in Portugal are in the municipalities of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area", he explained.

Henrique Joaquim gave as an example a project in the Algarve, in which eight municipalities coordinated by a Private Social Solidarity Institution (IPSS) share and manage an accommodation space for homeless people, in a public building that was unoccupied, but with " a very high income.”

For the executive manager of ENIPSSA, when public buildings are intended for these purposes, the principle of onerousness must be appropriate and not a lease for a normal market, "because when private non-profit sector entities are using the building they are not to make a profit, they are about to do what the State does not do, which is to develop social responses and welcome people in this case".

"A regional approach is not enough. It is also necessary to be interinstitutional", he highlighted, warning that the AML, where the phenomenon of homeless people is most significant, is the one that can least receive funds from the European Social Fund, and asking that this should be renegotiated in the new multi-annual financial framework.