Coimbra, Portugal, June 4, 2025 (Lusa) - The president of the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra (IPC) lamented on Wednesday that the main obstacle to creating more beds for students is the state, which refuses to take action and does nothing with its abandoned buildings.
"We hear every day from our ministers in various governments that there is no accommodation, that we cannot provide accommodation for young people or students, but then we discover that the main opponent to us providing accommodation is the state itself, which does nothing with its buildings and does not give them to us to use for accommodation," said Jorge Conde, speaking at the opening session of the A2ES Forum - Higher Education Student Accommodation, in Coimbra.
For the outgoing president of the IPC, the main complaint he has on this issue, after eight years in office, is not the lack of money, but the lack of conditions to ensure more student accommodation, namely the lack of willingness to release abandoned public property.
In his speech at the forum organised by the IPC to discuss student accommodation, Jorge Conde pointed to specific cases in Coimbra.
In one case, eight years ago, he asked the City Council, then run by another mayor, and repeated the request when the new government took office, to allocate two buildings to the IPC to be converted into student residences.
"These are central buildings, one belonging to the City Council and the other to some military force. We asked them to give us these two buildings so that we could turn them into residences, and all [the properties] had projects planned for them and something was going to happen to all of them. Eight years later, the buildings are worse than they were and more dilapidated," he noted.
Jorge Conde also recalled a request for the transfer of two buildings, which had been closed for a long time and belonged to Social Security, located next to the Institute of Accounting and Administration, for the same purpose. However, this request was also rejected because plans were in place for these properties.
"The buildings are still there and nothing has happened," he said.
In addition to the need for intervention in public heritage, the IPC president also defended a maintenance plan for student accommodation, recalling that the approximately 260 beds at the Polytechnic that are being refurbished and are 23 or 24 years old had never had "the mattresses changed".
"Today, we already have a plan to build and renovate, but we still don't have a plan for the maintenance of the accommodation," he warned.
During the opening session, the president of the National Federation of Polytechnic Higher Education Student Associations, Diogo Machado, considered that the current effort to increase student accommodation in higher education is welcome. However, the response is still "below real needs".
The student leader also defended the regulation of the student accommodation market, specifically the fight against rooms rented without a contract, which remains a reality that weakens students and their families.
In his speech, he also proposed a review of the accommodation supplement because of the prices charged in the various regions and the transfer of state assets to higher education institutions and municipalities.
JGA/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
