New Airbnbs banned and Golden Visa scrapped // Accused priests risk expulsion from church
New Airbnbs banned and Golden Visa scrapped // Accused priests risk expulsion from church
Portuguese news in English on Monday February 20, 2023.
New Airbnbs banned and Golden Visa scrapped
The government has announced a €900 million package to address the housing crisis, including a ban on almost all new Airbnbs and the scrapping of the controversial Golden Visa, Público reports. The government will also move to lease an undefined number of unused homes to sublet to less well-off tenants and vastly broaden the number of rental contracts subject to yearly increase limits.
One of the most controversial measures involves the requisition of unoccupied homes to place on the rental market under the government sublease arrangement. In the short term, families spending more than 35% of their income on rent will have access to a rental subsidy of up to €200 a month. The measure is aimed at existing contracts held by those in the first six tax brackets, with a maximum period of five years.
The package also includes significant tax breaks for owners renting their properties for longer periods, such as 10 or 20 years. There’s no set timeframe for the measures, some of which will need to pass Parliament, to be introduced. You can read more from Reuters in English.
Tenants applaud move as landlords accuse government of creating ‘chaos’
Groups representing property owners didn’t hold back with their criticism, describing parts of the plan as “blind ideology” and “hatred of private property”, DIário de Notícias reports. Lisbon Property Owners Association president Luís Menezes Leitão’s biggest concerns were with the mandatory renting of vacant homes and the handbrake on rental increases. He said the government caused panic among property owners and “practically killed the habitation market in Portugal”. Lisbon Tenants Association president Romão Lavadinho was unsurprisingly more positive, calling on the government to show the strength to follow through on the proposal. “In Lisbon there are almost 50,000 vacant houses, almost 150,000 in the Lisbon metropolitan area, 725,000 in the country,” he said. Economy Minister António Costa Silva guaranteed the government would “calibrate and adapt” the measures if necessary.
Priests accused of abuse risk expulsion from church
More than 100 allegedly abusive priests still active in the Catholic church risk expulsion if complaints against them are found to be credible, Público reports. A list of names based on last week’s shocking report into child sex abuse in the church is set to be delivered to public prosecutors and the Portuguese Bishops Conference within days. While prosecutors may have little to do in many of the cases thanks to the statute of limitations having expired, canon law expert José Alfredo Patríco said church rules gave victims 20 years after they turned 18 to make a complaint. He said any accusations would be investigated to see if they were credible and those found culpable could be expelled from the church.
In brief
Automatic residency for immigrants from Portuguese-speaking countries. The decree gives Community of Portuguese Language Countries citizens a year of residency. (Lusa)
President accuses centre-right PSD opposition party of imitating far-right Chega with immigration comments. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said the “copy always loses to the original”, after Social Democratic Party President Luís Montenegro called for the country to “search the world for communities that interact better with us, that can integrate better in our culture”. (Diário de Notícias)
Only court can decide if Stop union's school strikes are illegal. After a legal opinion from the Prosecutor general, experts say there are signs two of the strikes may have been illegal, but only a court could say for sure. (Público)
Public hospital to pay abortion expenses for woman who had to go private. Porto’s Santa Maria Hospital apologised after failing to follow its own rules in telling a woman there were no appointments available until after she’d passed the 10-week legal time limit.
On a lighter note
Guimarães girl Maria Germano Neto is years away from holding a driver licence but already has a contract with Ferrari, Público reports. She first encountered karting at just four years old and thought of it as a hobby until she was 11, when she was selected for the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile’s Girls on Track - Rising Stars competition and ended up winning. Now 12, she has the chance to train with TonyKart, the karting team at the Ferrari academy, and compete for the year, with the possibility of continuing if she races well enough.
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