“At this moment, the city council cannot, nor does it have the capacity, [...] to be cancelling all of these licenses”, stated Carlos Moedas (PSD), at the public meeting of the city council executive.

As part of the national Mais Habitação program, approved by the Government (PS), the new legislation, which came into force in September, gave AL registration holders two months to prove that they maintained their activity.

According to official data, Lisbon has 19,917 AL registrations, with 11,447 providing proof of activity registration, which means that more than 8,200 will have to be cancelled as the deadline for doing so has passed.

For the Mayor of Lisbon, the result of the obligation for AL owners to provide proof of maintaining activity “shows how in Portugal, Governments often take public policy measures, without studying the data”.

“Basically, we had a More Housing package that defined rules according to data that are not true after all. Lisbon, supposedly, had 20,000 local accommodation units in operation and now we know that there are only half of them, so public policy should have been made based on reality and it was not”, criticised the mayor.

Carlos Moedas considered that the implementation of measures without supporting data “shows a lack of detail and analysis”, resulting in “poorly designed” public policies.

The councilor for Urbanism, Joana Almeida (independent elected by the "Novos Tempos" coalition PSD/CDS-PP/MPT/PPM/Aliança), highlighted “the chaos caused by the Government's decision” to set a deadline for the submission of proof of those who have active local accommodation.

Joana Almeida confirmed that “11 thousand owners” in AL submitted proof of continued activity, documents that “Lisbon City Council, with its team of three human resources in this entire area of local accommodation, will have to validate”.

“In the rush to resolve this issue, the Government decided that those AL owners who have been in service for up to 120 days did not need to provide, submit, this proof, in other words, at the moment we have 9,000 AL owners that we do not know whether these are fictitious or ghost licenses”, he explained.

Joana Almeida reinforced that “it was chaos when it could have been an opportunity” to clarify how many AL have already transitioned to housing use, noting that the council was “without the possibility of knowing the reality that truly happens in the territory, because many of these licenses for AL are already under lease”.