The right to decent housing is enshrined in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, in its Article 65. However, in the last few years, this right has been undermined. In the main Portuguese cities, Lisbon and Porto, housing has been increasingly conceived as a financial investment. That is, housing has increasingly become a means for obtaining high incomes, through short-term rental to tourists or sale to foreign residents with high purchasing power.

The research project HOU$ING - Financialised housing in 21st century Portugal: Social representations, practices, and political stakes, based at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra (UC), aims to study the relation between the rise of financial markets, actors and motives - in other words, financialisation - in housing provision and the social representations and practices associated with housing.

Listening to the populations and involving them in the research is one of the objectives of this project coordinated by Raquel Ribeiro (CES) and Joaquim Pires Valentim (Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the UC), whose team began the work in January this year, having already been in Porto and Lisbon to talk to people in different housing situations, seeking to understand their perspectives and visions, and how they have felt the impact of the existing housing policies.

This fieldwork allowed a first survey of the main problems identified by people in the two cities, and respective metropolitan areas, and suggestions for a possible resolution of these problems. The data collected will now be analysed to help plan the next steps of the research. A summary will also be presented at an interim seminar of the HOU$ING project, scheduled for September.

To broaden this discussion on housing, HOU$ING keeps an open invitation to people to share their story. “Tell us your story!” is the invitation left on the project's website, where it is possible to find more news related to the work developed and the research themes:  https://www.ces.uc.pt/pt/investigacao/projetos-de-investigacao/housing/inicio.

Those interested in the theme, or in participating in future HOU$ING activities, can contact the project through the email housing@ces.uc.pt .