ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that housing in Portugal has a number of features which are common in other Mediterranean states but it also has certain distinctive characteristics, especially widespread illegal housing and shanty dwellings. The best starting point for the analysis of recent housing trends in Portugal is 1926, the date of a military coup which overthrew the democratically elected government. Part of the reason for the housing crisis in Portugal, then, is the demand for dwellings for new household formation. In fact illegal housing has been endemic in contemporary Portugal and is a more acute problem here than in any other European country save, perhaps, Greece, and shanties are relatively more numerous than in any other country except Turkey. The first lies in the structure of demand and stems from the distribution of incomes, for Portugal had one of the most skewed income distributions in Europe.
