Brief assessment of the Portuguese Framework Law for Housing

• Main Author: Tulumello, Simone
• Publication Date: 2019
• Other Authors: Silva, Rita
• Format: Report
• Language: eng
• Source: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Download full: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/40697

Four decades after the inscription of the right to housing in article 65 of the 1976 democratic Constitution of the Portuguese state, Portugal was still missing a law that would operationalise that very right. Amid a housing crisis that is cutting through most sectors of the society, and in face of the repoliticisation of this field, the Portuguese Parliament has launched, in 2017, a process which culminated in the recent approval of the Framework Law for Housing (Lei de Bases da Habitação; Law 83/2019, 3 September; hereafter Law). What follows is an assessment of the text of the Law, put in wider perspective by taking stock of recent academic works on Portuguese housing conditions and policy, and of the experience of Habita in supporting struggles for the right to housing. In summary, despite constituting an important step forward in the construction of a national policy and legal framework, the Law falls short of constituting a robust framework that could be concretely mobilised in the defence of the right to housing – with the weakest components being the provisions on the legal protection of the right to housing and on protections in the context of eviction.