The problem is not politicians and politically connected assholes. You had a liberalization of the renting market done by the previous right-wing government, coupled with the appearance of Airbnb and low interest rates for a decade. This led to a situation where it was cheap (low interest rates) to invest in real estate, place your new apartment on AirBnb and easily recover the investment.
Old landlords caught up to this and many preferred to evict tenants or increase the value asked to close to what they would get if they rented the apartment via Airbnb.
And there was still the many years of golden visas for foreign investors, also implemented by the previous right-wing government.
The left-wing government never did anything to change this, because all this real estate investment brought GDP growth to Portugal and when they proposed some semi-serious changes you had everyone benefiting from this status quo screeching that Portugal was becoming Venezuela.
But it’s now got to a point where the prices are unsustainable to almost everyone and as you said a lot of people are excluded from being able to buy a house. And the situation won’t improve in the next couple of years because interest rates probably will take a while to go down.
As for the brain drain, that’s an old historical problem. Heck, I had to emigrate last year and I am almost 40. The lack of stable work contracts, the non-existent salary growth from both the public and private sector already made thinking about settling down and having kids hard. These housing prices are just the final blow to the situation.
First, I disagree that a government which constantly harps about doing what’s good for business, unconditionally I might add (not “good for business which are good for people”, just good for any businesses), cuts down on Education and Healthcare citing lack of money whilst refusing to, for example, enforce the legislation on the taxing some asset (dams) sales by the private energy company of the country (which, by the way, was public, sold for a song and is riddled with politicians from the 2 main parties) and which has just saved a private airline with €3 billion of taxpayer’s money with the full intention of privatising it next year, is left of center.
Whatever leftwingery they had back in the 80s has long left the stage and policywise they’re now doing and defending what the mainstream rightwing party used to: less taxing of companies, less public spending and privatisations, only they added elements like the whole saving of private companies with public money to sell them back to the private (almost certainly for less than the public money put in them) ASAP or the selective closing of eyes to tax evasion (not avoidance, evasion: the illegal kind) as long as it was done by well connected companies, which in the old days not even the mainstream Right did.
Both parties of the power duopoly in Portugal do the same because as individuals their members and leadership are the same kind of people, as plenty of court cases have demonstrated and in fact, the supposed “leftwing” one seems to be the worst one, at least at government levels (though for the other one, all you have to remember is how in Germany a German Company was convicted for corrupting the Portuguese Government for a submarine sale, whilst in Portugal … *crickets*).
We are in the shithole we are because the people in the 2 parties which have had a near duopoly of power in the country since 74 have massivelly gained from the actions that put us in this, all the while blaming the “other side” as if de facto their policies differed when it came to manage the country for their own personal upside maximization and screw the rest.
They play politics like a one-two play in football, passing the ball back and forth whilst advancing to score against everybody else, members of the same team, and only those who look at nothing else but the ball go around blaming one side, then the other, then the first side, then the other and so on.
The problem is not politicians and politically connected assholes. You had a liberalization of the renting market done by the previous right-wing government, coupled with the appearance of Airbnb and low interest rates for a decade. This led to a situation where it was cheap (low interest rates) to invest in real estate, place your new apartment on AirBnb and easily recover the investment. Old landlords caught up to this and many preferred to evict tenants or increase the value asked to close to what they would get if they rented the apartment via Airbnb. And there was still the many years of golden visas for foreign investors, also implemented by the previous right-wing government. The left-wing government never did anything to change this, because all this real estate investment brought GDP growth to Portugal and when they proposed some semi-serious changes you had everyone benefiting from this status quo screeching that Portugal was becoming Venezuela.
But it’s now got to a point where the prices are unsustainable to almost everyone and as you said a lot of people are excluded from being able to buy a house. And the situation won’t improve in the next couple of years because interest rates probably will take a while to go down. As for the brain drain, that’s an old historical problem. Heck, I had to emigrate last year and I am almost 40. The lack of stable work contracts, the non-existent salary growth from both the public and private sector already made thinking about settling down and having kids hard. These housing prices are just the final blow to the situation.
First, I disagree that a government which constantly harps about doing what’s good for business, unconditionally I might add (not “good for business which are good for people”, just good for any businesses), cuts down on Education and Healthcare citing lack of money whilst refusing to, for example, enforce the legislation on the taxing some asset (dams) sales by the private energy company of the country (which, by the way, was public, sold for a song and is riddled with politicians from the 2 main parties) and which has just saved a private airline with €3 billion of taxpayer’s money with the full intention of privatising it next year, is left of center.
Whatever leftwingery they had back in the 80s has long left the stage and policywise they’re now doing and defending what the mainstream rightwing party used to: less taxing of companies, less public spending and privatisations, only they added elements like the whole saving of private companies with public money to sell them back to the private (almost certainly for less than the public money put in them) ASAP or the selective closing of eyes to tax evasion (not avoidance, evasion: the illegal kind) as long as it was done by well connected companies, which in the old days not even the mainstream Right did.
Both parties of the power duopoly in Portugal do the same because as individuals their members and leadership are the same kind of people, as plenty of court cases have demonstrated and in fact, the supposed “leftwing” one seems to be the worst one, at least at government levels (though for the other one, all you have to remember is how in Germany a German Company was convicted for corrupting the Portuguese Government for a submarine sale, whilst in Portugal … *crickets*).
We are in the shithole we are because the people in the 2 parties which have had a near duopoly of power in the country since 74 have massivelly gained from the actions that put us in this, all the while blaming the “other side” as if de facto their policies differed when it came to manage the country for their own personal upside maximization and screw the rest.
They play politics like a one-two play in football, passing the ball back and forth whilst advancing to score against everybody else, members of the same team, and only those who look at nothing else but the ball go around blaming one side, then the other, then the first side, then the other and so on.