Lisbon Municipal Council has now executed more than half of the measures in its ambitious €70M six-year plan to combat homelessness, according to João Marrana, coordinator of the Municipal Plan for Homeless People 2024–2030. The rapid pace of implementation—coupled with preliminary data suggesting a decline in rough sleeping—signals a policy shift that could reshape social services across Portugal's capital, though officials warn that evolving street conditions will require continuous adjustments through 2030.
Why This Matters
• Financial commitment: €5.5M was spent on homeless programs in 2024; of the €7M budgeted for 2025, €3.3M has already been deployed.
• Data update imminent: The NPISA (Núcleo de Planeamento e Intervenção Sem-Abrigo) is expected to release its 2025 homelessness census this week, providing the first official count since December 2024, when 3,122 people were recorded on Lisbon's streets.
• Practical change: Most municipal shelters now allow pets, recognizing the emotional-support role animals play for vulnerable residents.
• Emergency cooling: During this summer's heatwave, the city opened two sports pavilions and three metro stations overnight to protect rough sleepers from extreme temperatures.
A Plan Built for Adaptation
Approved in May 2024, the Municipal Plan for Homeless People targets 89 specific measures across five intervention pillars, from emergency accommodation to long-term rehousing. Speaking before the Lisbon Municipal Assembly's 6th Permanent Commission, Marrana emphasized that hitting the 50% mark ahead of schedule does not mean the plan will freeze.
"The way the street changes and social problems evolve in the city cannot tolerate us leaving the plan untouched for all the years remaining until 2030," he explained. Maria Luísa Aldim, the city councillor overseeing the portfolio (elected by the CDS-PP party), echoed the sentiment, noting that new measures will be added as data and street realities dictate.
The council is currently piloting a centralized information platform that aggregates data from municipal teams, the Portuguese Social Security Institute, health services, and non-governmental organizations. Restricted to authorized personnel, the system aims to reduce paperwork for frontline staff, freeing them to spend more time with people on the street rather than on administrative tasks.
Profile Shifts and Perception Gaps
Early figures from municipal technicians—ahead of the official NPISA report—suggest a decrease in the number of rough sleepers compared to the 3,122 recorded at the end of 2024, which itself represented a 7.6% drop from the 3,378 counted in December 2023. Yet the data also reveal a changing profile that complicates simple headcounts.
Aldim highlighted one example: individuals with substance-use disorders who consume drugs visibly on the street are often perceived as homeless by passersby, yet many have housing and are not classified as rough sleepers under NPISA definitions. This distinction matters for targeting resources effectively.
Another unexpected finding: foreign nationals account for no more than 35% of Lisbon's homeless population, far below what many observers had anticipated given recent migration flows into Portugal. Marrana described the figure as lower "than would be hypothetically foreseeable," suggesting that migrant support networks or other factors may be preventing newcomers from ending up on the street at the rates seen elsewhere in Europe.
What This Means for Residents
For people living in Lisbon, the plan's progress translates into visible street-level changes. The expansion of emergency beds, the rollout of the Housing First model—which Lisbon pioneered in Portugal in 2014—and the integration of mental-health and addiction services all aim to reduce the visibility of rough sleeping while improving outcomes for those affected.
The pet-friendly policy is a case in point. Aldim confirmed that "most of our municipal responses now allow a person to bring their animal," acknowledging that companion animals often serve a critical emotional-support function. The council is coordinating with partner organizations to ensure this practice becomes universal, though not all shelters have adopted it yet.
During the recent heatwave, the city activated two municipal sports pavilions—Casal Vistoso in Areeiro and Manuel Castelo Branco in São Vicente—as temporary cooling centers. Three metro stations—Oriente, Rossio, and Santa Apolónia—also extended hours to offer climate-controlled refuge overnight, a pragmatic step that underscores the council's willingness to repurpose public infrastructure in emergencies.
Hotel Social Mouraria: Rethinking the Target Audience
One of the flagship projects from the previous mandate of Mayor Carlos Moedas (PSD)—the Hotel Social de Lisboa in Mouraria—remains on track, but with a revised focus. Originally conceived as an emergency shelter exclusively for rough sleepers, the facility is now being reconsidered for a broader group of people facing social vulnerability.
"What is currently being analyzed is whether the target audience can be people with social vulnerability, precisely because of the neighborhood context," Aldim told the assembly. "For us, it is important that it is properly integrated and does not exert some kind of social pressure on the same space."
The project involves the rehabilitation of two adjacent municipal buildings at Rua das Olarias 41 and 43, with a budget of around €2M partly financed by the Recovery and Resilience Plan. The facility will offer 29 beds across individual, double, and triple rooms, supported by an industrial kitchen, laundry, and dedicated spaces for psychosocial services. The aim is not just short-term shelter but a comprehensive reintegration pathway covering mental health, skills training, and employment support.
Budget Clarity and Political Exchange
When Socialist Party deputy Beatriz Pereira questioned whether the council had disinvested in homelessness services, Aldim flatly rejected the accusation, laying out the spending record: €5.5M executed in 2024, with €3.3M of the €7M 2025 budget already disbursed by mid-year. The figures suggest an acceleration, not a retreat, though critics will await the full-year accounts.
The assembly session also touched on coordination across the NPISA network, which brings together municipalities, the Portuguese Social Security Institute, health authorities, and NGOs. This multi-agency structure mirrors best practices in other European cities, particularly the Housing First model that has driven Finland's success in reducing homelessness by roughly 30% since 2008.
European Context: Lisbon in the Continental Picture
Lisbon's approach places it within a small group of European cities actively experimenting with Housing First principles. The model—providing immediate, unconditional access to independent housing, then wrapping support services around the tenant—contrasts sharply with the traditional "staircase" approach that requires sobriety or employment before a person qualifies for stable accommodation.
Across the European Union, homelessness more than doubled between 2009 and 2023, reaching an estimated 890,000 people. Germany and France each count over 200,000 rough sleepers, driven by rising living costs, migration pressures, and a shrinking stock of affordable social housing. The European Commission has set a target to eradicate homelessness by 2030, launching the European Platform to Combat Homelessness and the European Affordable Housing Plan, yet implementation remains patchy.
Nine cities—including Braga in northern Portugal—formed the URBACT ROOF network to share strategies and influence EU policy. Lisbon's 340 Housing First units, distributed across eight projects for people with mental-health and substance-use challenges, position the capital as a test case for scalability in Southern Europe.
Administrative Modernization and Data Governance
The forthcoming NPISA report, expected within days, will provide the first comprehensive snapshot of Lisbon's homeless population since the end of 2024. The new centralized data platform, still in testing, promises to streamline reporting cycles and reduce duplication across agencies. By consolidating intake records, service contacts, and outcome tracking in a single restricted-access system, the council hopes to generate real-time insights that can guide resource allocation and identify emerging trends—such as the substance-user perception gap—before they become entrenched.
For technicians on the ground, the system should mean less time entering data into multiple databases and more face-to-face contact with clients. For policymakers, it offers a clearer evidence base to justify budget requests and measure the return on the €70M investment pledged through 2030.
Looking Ahead: Flexibility as Strategy
Marrana's insistence that the plan must remain "open" reflects a pragmatic recognition: street homelessness is not a static problem. Economic shocks, migration flows, housing-market pressures, and public-health crises—such as the opioid trends now visible in Lisbon—can all shift the profile and scale of rough sleeping faster than a six-year plan can adapt.
By committing to continuous review and the addition of new measures, the council is betting that agility will prove more valuable than rigid adherence to the original 89-point blueprint. Whether that flexibility translates into sustained reductions in rough sleeping, or simply more sophisticated management of a persistent problem, will depend on the data that emerges this week—and on the political will to adjust course when the numbers demand it.
