More than a thousand applications have been submitted for the 11th edition of Porto Solidário, a municipal program to help with rent and bank payments for housing loans. According to the City Hall, this is “a record number, surpassing all previous editions of the program”.
Porto Solidário, administered by the municipal company Domus Social, is aimed at families in financial difficulty or in a housing emergency, and this year “the number of families with their own homes requesting assistance from the City Council has more than doubled.
Most of the requests have to do with households that need help paying the rent and only 7.41% correspond to help with the bank installment.
Analyzing the data of the current edition of the program, it is possible to see that the average household income has increased by 70 euros; however, this is accompanied by an increase of about 30 euros in the rent and the bank installment.
For families, the rent of the house corresponds to an expenditure of 378 euros with a monthly income of 672 euros, which means that more than half of this amount is spent on housing, according to the Municipality.
Most of the families applying live in the Centro Histórico, Bonfim, Campanhã and Paranhos parishes.
It will now begin the analysis of applications, but Autarchy provides “the allocation of 2.6 million in support”. The program, created in 2014 and in which it has already invested more than 13 million euros, currently helps more than 1200 families. This financial support is granted for a period of two years and can reach the maximum limit of 262.50 euros.