However, only around 25% of these dwellings are new homes. Everything indicates that contrary to what had been promised, this program will have a reduced contribution to increasing the Portuguese public housing stock.

After closing the list of candidate projects for the 1st Law by the Institute of Housing and Urban Rehabilitation (IHRU), researcher Aitor Oro, from the Center for Studies in Architecture and Urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, concluded that 59,337 houses will be financed, of which 26,007 are within the scope of the PRR and the rest with budgetary support, cites Público.

Of the more than 59 thousand houses counted, the vast majority are destined for rehabilitation and not new construction.

These new houses made available under the 1st Right will have a reduced impact on the increase in the public housing stock, increasing it from the current 2% to just 2.6% of the total (+34,127 public houses). It is worth remembering that the goal was to increase the share of housing with public support from 2% to 5% of the total housing stock, which would mean placing an additional 170,000 homes on the market, says the publication.

Although more than half of the 59 thousand houses are concentrated in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon (25,940) and Porto (9,802), the researcher concludes that there will be improvements in terms of the public housing stock made available by municipalities, with fewer municipalities with a public housing stock of less than 2 % (should fall from 258 to 188) and more municipalities that will have affordable housing above 5% of the total (should rise from six to 16).