Opinion.
Portugal already has a Ministry responsible for both public housing and Lisbon Airport. Now all we need is the plan.
The Minister of Infrastructures and Housing, Pedro Nuno Santos, went through a particularly hectic period in the middle of the year. In June, the Minister announced a new solution for the expansion of airport capacity in Lisbon (Montijo + Alcochete), and was unauthorized in public by the Prime Minister, in less than 24 hours. Less than a month later, the same Pedro Nuno Santos - who had been reported dismissed by Público newspaper - started a cycle of inaugurations and continues until today: more railway equipment refurbished, a bet of CP started in the his first termand several public housing projects around the country. The new homes are part of a program that aims to build more than 35 thousand firesusing PRR funds, dubbed by the Minister as "National Housing Service".
The Airport dossier (along with TAP) has been the Minister's Achilles heel. However, this portfolio may contain a fundamental piece for the construction of a true National Housing Service, which combats the Lisbon and Portugal have a serious housing problem.
The saga of the new Lisbon Airport takes over 50 years old (Humberto Delgado Airport is 79 years old), in which several alternatives have already been discussed, such as Ota, Alverca, Alcochete and Montijo. Unfortunately, the fate of the current airport has not been debated with the same vigor. Humberto Delgado Airport occupies an extensive area in the heart of the Metropolitan Area, an area with good access to the capital's main centers, and includes a metro station. This land would be a unique opportunity for the Lisbon Metropolitan Area to plan from scratch what could be the backbone of the National Housing Service.
From a historical point of view, Portugal has had an important set of public policies for housing, as António Figueiredo of the Aliança Social Democrata project explains. The Special Relocation Plan (PER), focused on the eradication of precarious constructions and shacks, was the most comprehensive program of the democratic period. However, the country has never developed a fully transformative, lasting, inter-class housing project that has made public housing one of the pillars of our welfare state. As a consequence, Portugal has one of the minimal social housing stock, one of the smallest in the Global North.
There are several examples of successful, large-scale public housing in the world, developed under various economic and social conditions. Vienna moved forward with a radical public housing project after the First World War. Within a decade, social democratic municipal governments built 60,000 municipal apartmentsan experiment that became known as Red Viennaand that still today has positive impacts on the city.
After World War II, it was the turn of the British Labor Government (1945-1951) to start a massive public housing program, which built about 800,000 dwellings social housing ('Council Housing') in one term. This policy was intended to create decent housing for the entire population. The mastermind of this project, Aneurin Bevan, summarized this policy in the phrase "putting the worker, the doctor and the priest living side by side". This social project was abandoned, in what was the largest privatization in UK history (more than a million public housing units sold), under the Thatcher government.
On the other side of the world, Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, inspired by the Fabian ideology (a British socialist society), began to develop an economic model in the 1960s in which the state became the main provider of housing. Through replacement of substandard housing with high-density constructionPublic housing now covers almost the entire population of the city-state (80%). 54,000 apartments were built in a period when Singapore was poorer than Portugal (1960-65). In recent decades, the state housing agency has moved forward with the installation of solar panels on a large scale in the buildings it owns.
To combat housing crisis in Portugalmeasures are needed to contain the strong international demand (via local accommodation, gold visas, etc). However, it is also essential to create a public housing stock, especially in the larger urban centers, where prices are higher. The current Lisbon Airport would be an ideal place to put into practice the kind of ambition tested in other parts of the world. Assuming the highest population density levels in Lisbon (Rua Morais Soares, in the area between Arroios Penha de Franca), the 640 hectares of the Airport would be able to house more than 125,000 residents. If the density of Barcelona's "Superblocks" is replicated, where the use of car was recently restrictedthe Airport could be a residence for 320 thousand people. A plan of these dimensions would be truly transformative for the country, and could house more people than the 33,000 homes projected for the entire country.
The immense potential of the current Airport area to combat the housing crisis is not compatible with solutions like Portela + Montijo in the long term. In addition to fighting the current housing crisis, this plan can make an important contribution to reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions by building energy-efficient housing within a public transportation network. A large-scale expansion of the housing stock in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, one of the most economically developed areas of the country, would increase the capacity to absorb new residents (national and foreign) to counteract the demographic decline experienced in recent decades and promote an economy less dependent on tourism.
Portugal already has a Ministry responsible for both public housing and Lisbon Airport. Now all we need is the plan.
