Dozens of people have been waiting since dawn today at the door of the Housing and Urban Rehabilitation Institute (IHRU), in Lisbon, to get one of the 20 daily vouchers for assistance and some help to pay the rent for their house.
The “Door-to-Door” movement called for a protest at the IHRU facilities today, between 7:30 am and 9:30 am, to demand a service that responds to requests for income support, and will send letters to the Secretary of State for Housing and the Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, according to the movement’s spokesperson, André Escoval.
“The problems range from north to south of the country, with cuts in income support and the ‘Porta65’ program and there are only 10 passwords in the morning and 10 passwords in the afternoon for face-to-face service, in Lisbon and Porto. It is impossible via the Internet or telephone”, lamented André Escoval to Lusa.
The movement in defense of the right to housing has criticized the IHRU’s lack of response, speaking of delays of “more than a year”, which lead “several families to despair across the country”.
Porta a Porta reports that communication channels with the IHRU (telephone and internet) “are inaccessible”.
To solve “a problem that is national”, people are having to go directly to the IHRU service centers that only exist in Lisbon and Porto, points out Porta a Porta.
The president of the IHRU acknowledged that the response is failing. Speaking to Lusa, on October 14, at the end of a hearing in the Assembly of the Republic, António Benjamim Costa Pereira admitted that the scenario is “very serious”, particularly in the delay in responding to the almost 60 thousand beneficiaries of the Extraordinary Income Support Program (PAER) with the situation unresolved.