NEW GENERATION OF HOUSING POLICIES IN PORTUGAL:

CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN SPEECH AND PRACTICES IN THE RIGHT TO HOUSING

Abstract

The launch of the New Generation of Housing Policies (NGPH) initiative represents an innovative government discursive moment in the attempt to solve the structural problems that have been posed to the advancement of Law to housing in our country. However, in operational and practical terms, countless contradictions persist. The construction of the essay will start from postulates or concepts already established in the consulted literature that allows us, through logical work relating explanatory hypothesis, to deconstruct some of those contradictions in this text, namely: (i) the neoliberal offensive concealed from decentralization, present in the municipalization of housing policies; (ii) the financing logics of the instruments of action that promote multiple accumulative financialization engineering, feeding the State-Finance-Real Estate nexus and (iii) the new role of the neoliberal capitalist State as a promoter, manager and guarantor of housing, as opposed to a desirable state that builds, implements and executes housing and a consequent public policy in this sector. The paper will conclude with an apology for the principles of a true and consequent Public Housing Policy in the path of universal realization of the inalienable and unconditional Right to Housing in national territory.