Lisbon, Jan. 21, 2026 (Lusa) - The Communist, Left Bloc and Green parties in the Lisbon city council have insisted on putting the brakes on new hotels in the city as one of the solutions to the housing crisis, while the city council ruling coalition rejected restrictions without having concrete data on tourist numbers.

The issue was initially raised by municipal councillor Natacha Amaro, of the Communist Party (PCP), during the Lisbon Municipal Assembly meeting on Tuesday evening, which was attended by the mayor, Social Democrat Carlos Moedas, who presented the activity report for September to November 2025.

"The number of beds available [in hotels] is increasing persistently and in a very concentrated way in the city, which is why measures such as the suspension of licensing" for new hotels were necessary, argued the communist representative.

Natacha Amaro pointed out that the pace of hotel construction in Lisbon has intensified since 2019 and criticised the Lisbon city council's actions, accusing it of keeping "the door open for unrestricted approval" of new hotel construction, "with the impacts that this entails".

The councillor also pointed out the impact of tourism on housing and considered that the delivery of 55 keys by the Lisbon city council in Bairro dos Alfinetes during the three months under review, although important for those families, falls "far short of the urgent need for housing in Lisbon".

For the communist municipal councillor, the city hall "wasted the opportunity to try to mobilise state assets to respond to the brutal housing crisis", recalling that the government decided to sell public properties and moved forward with public-private partnerships for housing projects on 14 state-owned plots of land, seven of which are in Lisbon.

In the same vein, Rodrigo Machado, elected by the Left Bloc (the BE), considered that talking about sustainable balance in relation to short-term rental accommodation "in a city that is one of the most expensive in the world to live in", with "unbridled tourism and thousands and thousands of people pushed out of the city" and "without a serious policy to curb new hotels", "is like trying to balance a scale with only one weight".

Cláudia Madeira, from the Greens, argued that the short-term rental accommodation regulations "should be more restrictive, in line with the draft that was put out for public consultation", in order to ensure an effective balance.

"It is inconceivable and unjustifiable that there is no brake on the licensing of new hotels to curb tourist pressure on the housing market [and] we would like to hear the position of Lisbon city council and the reason for understanding that there is no need to move forward with this measure," Cláudia Madeira pointed out.

João Monteiro, from the left wing Livre Party, pointed out that only two short-term rental accommodation licences were cancelled after complaints were made and that no proactive inspections were carried out, insisting on the need for supervision, while António Morgado Valente, from the People-Animals-Nature Party, argued that the city needs a regulation that is "prudent, conservative and that, at least, does not worsen the situation, but, unfortunately, it goes in the opposite direction."

Given the floor to the city council, Carlos Moedas pointed out that the 2019 short-term rental accommodation regulation had ratios of 20% for absolute containment and 10% for relative containment, which had been halved, and agreed that much more supervision is needed.

Vasco Moreira Rato, an independent councillor responsible for housing, considered that the approved short-term rental accommodation regulations "are balanced", pointing out that in 25 parishes no short-term rental accommodation licence is possible under those rules.

On the brake on new hotels, Vasco Moreira Rato reiterated that the ruling PSD/CDS-PP/IL council coalition did not follow the PCP's proposal (rejected with votes against from PSD, CDS-PP, IL and Chega and abstention from PS), considering that "blind restriction, without studies, without analysed information" did not seem appropriate and pointing out that the study on tourist capacity in the city "is about to be launched".

MPE/AYLS // AYLS

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