Public housing rent arrears in Portugal top €48 million — and Lisbon owes €44 million of it
Lisbon, Porto, Cascais and Sintra ended 2025 with €48 million in uncollected public housing rent. Defaults are falling, but there were 86 evictions.
Unpaid rent in the public housing stock of Portugal’s four biggest municipalities reached €48 million by the end of 2025 — and Lisbon alone accounts for €44.1 million. Cascais comes a distant second at €2.5 million, Porto owes close to €1 million, and Sintra just over €471,000.
Why does Lisbon carry almost all of it?
Mostly scale: the capital manages more than 21,700 municipal homes — more than Porto, Cascais and Sintra combined. Gebalis, the municipal company running Lisbon’s estates, says closer monitoring of struggling families is paying off, while warning that every euro uncollected is a euro missing from maintenance and renovation work — its activity is documented on the official Gebalis site.
There is real progress underneath the headline number: the default rate fell from 19% in 2021 to 9.4% in 2025, and the average monthly shortfall dropped from €324,000 to €190,000. The accumulated debt is a heavy inheritance, but the curve has pointed down for five years.
How many evictions were there?
At least 86 across the four municipalities in 2025, over unpaid rent or misuse of the homes — always described as a last resort. Lisbon’s tenants’ association argues for a different route: intervening earlier with families and writing off the portion of the debt that is provably uncollectable, which in practice nobody expects to recover anyway.
The issue lands in the middle of Portugal’s broader rental reform — the government is preparing deep changes to leases, evictions and old rents — and against a private market where prices have finally begun to correct. In the public stock, the challenge is older: collecting what is owed without pushing out people who have nowhere else to go.
Infographic: Tugadaily · data Rádio Renascença
