Lisbon Resumes Its Affordable Housing Draws After Three Months, as Prosecutors Examine the Platform Behind Them

Lisbon City Council has resumed its draws for affordable rental homes after a three-month pause, holding its first since 19 June on Monday. At the same time, the Ministério Público has confirmed that it has opened a file to examine the council's online draw platform, after an external audit found weaknesses in it.

On Monday at midday the council drew 25 homes for young people aged up to 35 under De Volta ao Bairro ("Back to the Neighbourhood"), the council's youth affordable rent scheme. The draw ran on the same platform that is under review.

What prosecutors are doing

The Procuradoria-Geral da República (PGR) told the newspaper Observador that prosecutors have set up a monitoring file (a "dossiê de acompanhamento") on the council's affordable housing draws, following an anonymous complaint. The PGR describes this as an internal procedure to gather and organise information so that prosecutors can decide, after careful assessment, whether there are grounds to take the matter to court, in this case the administrative courts.

In other words, it is not a criminal inquiry, at least for now. The PGR said some steps have already been taken and others are still under way.

How the pause came about

The trouble began with the 29th round of the Programa de Renda Acessível, Lisbon's affordable rent programme, which was held on 16 June 2026, a day earlier than scheduled. The mayor, Carlos Moedas, blamed "human error", but the council approved a Socialist Party proposal for an "external and independent" audit of the draw platform. Deloitte carried it out and found gaps in the platform arising from missing or insufficient IT controls.

João Ferreira, the Communist Party (PCP) councillor who first raised doubts about the draw's "integrity", said the audit report pointed to "serious gaps in the procedure and, in particular, in the IT platform that supports the allocation of municipal homes". The process, he said, had to be "bulletproof".

The council says the pause was not imposed by any court. The office of Vasco Moreira Rato, the councillor responsible for housing, told Observador that new competitions were postponed while new IT security measures were put in place across municipal systems, and that tests and checks were carried out on council applications, including the Habitar Lisboa platform used for the draws.

The opposition was not satisfied. At a council meeting on 30 September, Left Bloc councillor Ricardo Moreira accused Moedas of suspending at least 200 homes, including those in the De Volta ao Bairro scheme. Moedas pointed to the PCP's warning in June as the reason for the checks and said the draws would go on.

What applicants should know

Applications and draws for Lisbon's municipal affordable homes go through Habitar Lisboa, the council's housing platform, and each competition sets its own eligibility conditions in its notice. Anyone who applied to a round affected by the pause should check the platform for new dates, as the council has not published a timetable for the remaining competitions.

The resumed draws come as housing costs drive protests across the country, including Saturday's marches in four cities and a protest camp in Porto that police dismantled on Monday.