President de Sousa made the announcement on Sunday night, invoking “social reasons”, and guaranteed the newly promulgated bill “does nor compromise owners’ rights not does it conflict with the Constitution”.
The bill temporarily suspends the eviction of “tenants in vulnerable situations”;these said to be “the elderly aged 65 or over, and citizens with a high degree of disability”.
An extensive note penned by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on the promulgation, published on the portal of the Presidency of the Republic, said: “Considering these arguments and the social justifications of greater fragility and less ability to provide responses, which underpin the diploma, the President of the Republic believes they should be upheld. Which is, in fact, something he has always defended”,
On 6 July, parliament passed a global final vote on a bill drawn up on the basis of PS and Left Bloc projects, which establishes an “extraordinary and transitional regime for the protection of elderly or disabled persons, who are renters and have resided at the same address for over 15 years”.
The bill was passed with votes in favour from the parliamentary left-wing (PS, PCP, BE and PEV) and the PAN party for People, Animals and Nature, having been rejected by the PSD social democrats and the conservative CDS-PP Christian democrats.
This comes as reports this week highlight that the price of rents in Porto and Lisbon have soared by 20 percent, pushed up by a lack of housing. As an example, whereas the price for a T2 in Queluz three years ago was around €350 per month, landlords are now asking in the region of €550 per month, according to latest data.
The report, in Diário de Notícias (DN), also said that the length of time it takes for one tenant to leave and another to move in is shorter than ever, and that there is a stark difference in rental performances pre-and-post 2015.
“This year [2015] marks the beginning of a cycle of year-on-year increases in rental prices which, in the case of Porto, translated into a 20 percent increase in the first three months of this year. This is the highest increase in the last seven years, well above the 13 percent registered at national level and which places the northern city at the same level as rises in Lisbon”, DN reports.
“Despite this inflation in rents, the time that landlords can expect to have a new tenant is getting shorter”, the newspaper elaborates, stating that, according to data from Confidential Real Estate provided to DN / Dinheiro Vivo, “in 2013, the owner of a property in Porto could expect an average of five months until he could find a new tenant, and in Lisbon or Sintra it took three months. Now they expect much less and there are situations where the houses do not even make it onto websites, or stay there for less than 48 hours”.