Mr Chairman, Ladies and gentlemen,
Housing is a condition for living. It is something that each one of us cannot do without – and that, to maintain it, we will make all the cuts, all the sacrifices, we will go through all the difficulties that are possible, up to the limit of deciding to give up our roof, our home.
This is the situation in which thousands and thousands of people find themselves. Every day finding what they can cut to survive.
The young people don't stay in their parents' house until they're 30 or 35 out of convenience, no, they stay there because of the precariousness of their jobs, the instability of their lives, because they can't afford to have a home of their own.
People do not “choose” to share a house with others, often strangers, nor do they “choose” to live in camping tents – they do so because they have no options.
We are indeed facing a drama. A drama for the families, a drama for the young people, a drama for the students and their parents.
And in view of all this, in view of brutal speculation, in view of a rental market completely contrary to the needs of the population, in view of greed and accumulation of profits by the banks, in view of the gifts to real estate funds, in view of all this, to which one must add the unaffordable increases in the prices of food, gas, electricity, telecommunications, fuel, tolls, school supplies, among other day-to-day needs… what does the government do?
It comes forward with a package it calls “More Housing”, but whose more appropriate name should be “more transfers”, more transfers to banks, more transfers of benefits to real estate funds, at the end of the day this is what results in the supposed more housing.
A few days ago, measures were announced by the government. Measures that, although they may be important for those who can access them, leave untouched by choice, and only by choice, those mainly responsible for the situation we have reached and simultaneously the main beneficiaries of this situation – the banks.
They are insufficient, late measures that, above all, ignore the core issues. Insufficient because, by relieving the tightness of the rope, they leave a noose around the neck of those who have a mortgage loan. Late because there is nothing to justify measures, albeit limited, being taken after the tenth increase in interest rates. And they miss the target, because the target should be to put banking profits to support the increase in interest rates.
Not a single measure, not even anything close to this, would pinch the banks' 11 million euros in profits per day.
The government determines that we must pay the same and in full, the government guarantees to the banks that they can continue to fill the coffers by receiving everything, in full and increasingly more. A decision that not only prolongs the unbearable level of payments paid to banks, but also in no way guarantees that they will not rise even further, as the ECB has admitted.
The government, which talks about "reducing and stabilising" payments to the bank, is in practice pushing families to postpone those payments which, being a little "reduced" for two years, will have to be paid in full later.
Zero savings for families, full profits for banks. This is not the answer the country needs!
Courage, determination, a policy at the service of the workers and people, this is what is required at this moment. And that means facing the banks, their interests and making them, with their millions of euros in profits, bear the rise in interest rates.
It is necessary to protect home ownership, stop seizures and evictions, prevent speculation, impose a maximum limit of 0.43% increase on rents next year. It is necessary to implement a moratorium for a maximum of two years, suspending the reimbursement of capital and paying interest only at a rate equal to that at which banks finance themselves.
The truth is that banks finance themselves at values much lower than those charged for home loans. And the truth is that it pays two to three times less for deposits than what it charges for loans.
It is necessary for Caixa Geral de Depósitos, as a public bank, to pursue a clear option that allows the spread and banking costs to be reduced.
It is necessary to eliminate tax benefits for speculators and real estate funds, and put an end to the tax regime privilege represented by the Non-Habitual Resident Programme.
It is necessary to make a strong commitment to provide public housing, mobilising resources for the construction, rehabilitation and purchase of housing, a decisive element in preventing the right to housing from being held hostage by banking profits and real estate speculation, a decisive condition to ensure that in Portugal, as the Constitution of the Republic says, “everyone has the right, for themselves and their family, to a home”.
And that involves facing the banks and making them, with their millions of profits at our cost, assume the rise in interest rates. It involves fighting speculation, fighting the privileges of banks and real estate funds and, above all, an issue that can only be resolved with a general and significant increase in wages and pensions. And as for wages, enough talk, increase wages by 15%, to a minimum of 150 euros for all workers.
Despite, as we have already said, the insufficient, limited, propagandistic nature of these measures, and the fact that they completely ignore the core issues, the truth is that these measures now announced by the government demonstrate once again that the government was forced by the people's struggle to do something. That it's always worth fighting!
And it is this fight that will continue, this Saturday, the 30th., in various parts of the country, a fight that sooner or later, will lead to the measures that are necessary to respond to the housing problem.
Once again, we reaffirm the PCP's commitment to continue the intervention and fight to guarantee the right to housing.
And we will say this as often as necessary: Housing really has to be a right and not a commodity – and what is urgent is to guarantee houses to live in, not to speculate on!
