Chega proposes emergency housing package with 50% larger IRS deductions and possible deficit

An emergency package for housing

André Ventura announced on Sunday, 18 October 2026, at a press conference at Chega's national headquarters in Lisbon, that his party will propose an emergency legislative package on housing. He said he was offering it to the various parties in Parliament and called for an agreement that could address the problems that have built up over recent years. Ventura also acknowledged that new construction cannot relieve the pressure in the short term, so the package is framed as a transitional response.

“We will not be able to build our way out of the housing problem in a few months.”

Tax measures

The core proposal is a 50% increase in the IRS income tax deductions that households can claim on rent and on housing credit repayments. Ventura argued that the additional amounts families pay should be returned through the tax system, and described the measure as a transitional system meant to answer the current crisis. Chega also wants to review the tax benefits granted to wealthy foreign buyers of homes in Portugal, arguing that a rich foreigner should not have better access to housing than a Portuguese middle-class buyer. He called the municipal property tax, the IMI, absurd and asked for it to be reassessed, while acknowledging that it is a source of municipal revenue.

Budget and the rental law

Asked whether the package could put the budget surplus expected next year at risk, Ventura said a deficit was worth the risk if it meant better housing conditions for Portuguese people. He framed the trade-off in these terms.

“There is no point in having a country with rich accounts and poor people.”

On the rental law, Ventura said Chega and the PSD had agreed on a set of changes that the government should make during the committee stage of the bill. He said that process has not yet begun and that he had seen no sign the government wanted to correct the bill. Without that correction, he said, the changes to the rental law would not pass. Ventura also criticized the government's rental law proposal as a law that wants the market to stay largely unregulated.

“It is a legislation that wants to see the market wildly out of control and unregulated.”

Rents, interest rates and the government

Ventura said rents had risen by 75% over the past five years in some districts of Portugal, and that mortgage interest rates had also climbed sharply over the same period. He said wages had stagnated or risen by at most eight or nine percent, which he set against housing payments he said had grown by 300%. He called the government completely insensitive to the issue and accused the prime minister of selfishness on the subject. He rejected the idea that the market could solve the problem alone, whether through evictions, looser rules on rent increases or a lack of protection for owners.

Protests

Ventura warned that the housing protests already under way, along with opposition to the government's rental law, could grow if nothing is done. He said they could gain more strength, more fight and more ambition, and could draw in associations, parties and social movements. Chega's package is presented as the answer to that pressure, with the party seeking support from the other parliamentary groups.