Lisbon council's rent subsidy extended to more people

Lisbon City Council has launched a new edition of the Municipal Subsidy for Affordable Rent (SMAA), which supports households that spend at least a third of their income on rent. With a new feature: from now on, the minimum limit is six thousand euros per year.

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In order to cover a more significant part of the populationAt the beginning of February, in a private meeting, the Lisbon City Council decided that families with a low income should be allowed to live in Lisbon. minimum global income of six thousand euros/year will be eligible for the new edition of the Municipal Subsidy for Affordable Rent (SMAA), which has since been launched.

The Municipal Subsidy for Affordable Rent (SMAA) is aimed at those who spend at least 30% of their income on renting a home on the private market. "If a third of my salary is 300 euros and I have to pay 500, the council pays 200 euros a month, which is so that the person can pay for the house and not lose it"explained Housing Councillor Filipa Roseta, in an interview with LPP in November. "Affordable housing isn't in the house itself; it's in the rent that the person pays. So if I support the rent, any house on the market can be affordable. Suddenly, I don't have to build 10,000 houses because they're on the market."

In the tender now in force - the sixth since the launch of this support - the minimum threshold for overall household income has been reduced to 6,000 euros per year, instead of the 9,870 euros in force until now, to allow for widening the universe of beneficiaries. Income is measured from the IRS assessment note. Applications are open until March 9th on the municipality's website. The subsidy is awarded to all families and individuals who meet the access requirements and apply on time.

Main conditions for access to the Lisbon Municipal Subsidy for Affordable Rent (SMAA)
  • Nationals or foreigners with a valid residence permit, over the age of 18, who have an effort rate equal to or greater than 30% with the payment of rent;
  • no member of the household may be the owner, usufructuary or holder of another urban property title or autonomous fraction of urban property intended for housing in the Lisbon metropolitan area.

Applications available here until March 9th.

The text of the proposal that went before the City Council at the beginning of February to lower the conditions of access to the SMAA states that the "gravity" the housing problem "requires urgent measures in the short term to support families in particularly vulnerable situations". "In recent years, the facts have shown a growing and sustained mismatch between supply in the housing market and the social reality of demand, both in terms of rents and the pressure of demand. These realities have increasingly made it difficult for families to access and maintain housing"is indicated in the proposal signed by Filipa Roseta.

It should be noted that in the last edition of the SMAA, the minimum income threshold of six thousand euros had already been stipulated exclusively for young people up to the age of 35, as a result of a proposal put forward by the PS. This condition has now been extended to all those eligible for this support, i.e, "all age groups over 18"as you can read in the text. Although the minimum level of access is now universal, the Lisbon City Council reserves the right to approve the following for future editions of the SMAA "specific preferential or positive discrimination for certain segments of housing demand". The municipality has done this in the past, when, for example, it favored this support for displaced teachers who worked in the city.

Overdue payments

In 2023, the municipality allocated 1.5 million under the SMAA, benefiting around a thousand families. However, as Diário de Notícias (DN) reports, rent subsidies have not yet been paid to tenants who applied up to October last yeardue to alleged bureaucratic problems. Filipa Roseta's office clarified to DN that the overdue support "will be paid as soon as possible" and that the beneficiaries will receive "always the back payments" from November, "regardless of the date the contract was signed".

According to the same newspaper, this delay is leaving "desperate" the tenants who applied and were selected, "because they have to cope with the biggest increase in rents in the last 30 years - 6.9% since January, as shown by the update coefficient published in Diário da República on October 31 by the National Statistics Institute"writes journalist Bruno Horta.

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