The Government's 1st Law program aims to empower low income families with access to decent housing. The government has already signed agreements with 185 municipal councils, which translates into 52,436 houses available for allocation.

However, so far only 1,070 (2%) have actually been allocated and 2,891 (6%) have been contracted, according to data from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing and shared by Jornal de Notícias.

In addition, the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) predicts that 26,000 homes will be ready by the end of 2026.

As Jornal de Notícias explains, the program started with an allocation of 700 million euros until 2024, but the great adhesion of the municipalities, combined with the possibility of 100% financing through the PRR, led the Government to be more ambitious and the current investment “is more than three billion euros”.

The Ministry of Infrastructure also reveals that 26,000 houses will be financed by the PRR, while the rest will have “funding shared between the central administration and the respective municipalities”. Throughout the process, the municipal councils go through three stages: first, the cooperation agreement is signed, followed by the contracting of the works and, finally, the works are carried out and the keys are given to the new residents.

The Lisbon and Tagus Valley region has the most houses to allocate to needy families, with 39% of the agreements signed, in contrast to the Centre, Azores and Madeira regions, which still do not have any agreement signed.