"According to the Institute of Housing and Urban Rehabilitation (IHRU), data from the 2025 assessment indicate that support payments will be paid to 129,642 tenants in September, retroactive to January," the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing said in a written response to Lusa.

The number of tenants with inconsistencies and whose payments will therefore be suspended is 58,659. In these situations, beneficiaries will be notified and must regularise their situation through the Citizen Consultation Portal available on the IHRU website.

On Tuesday, the Public Defender's Office announced that it had sent a letter to the Secretary of State for Housing requesting an urgent review of the extraordinary rent payment support, after receiving a "significant volume of complaints" revealing serious irregularities.

When questioned by Lusa, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing emphasized that "the Extraordinary Rent Support Program (PAER), created in 2023 by the previous government, was poorly designed, involving the cross-referencing of data from five different entities (IHRU, the Tax Authority, Social Security, the General Pension Fund, and the Foundation for Science and Technology), without ensuring its interoperability."

As previously announced by the government, a review of the program is planned "soon" to ensure its operationalization.

This year, the Ombudsman's Office recorded a significant increase in the number of complaints regarding the suspension and reduction of support, and between May 2023 and July 2025, it received approximately one thousand requests related to this rental support scheme.

The Ombudsman's Office concluded that the legal framework was designed without regard for the fundamental rights and guarantees of those under its jurisdiction, and that the Housing and Urban Rehabilitation Institute (IHRU), the Tax and Customs Authority (AT), and the Social Security Institute (ISS) have insufficient coordination and response capacity.

The Ombudsman's Office also found that "fully enshrined rights, such as the right of citizens to information, notification of decisions, justification for administrative acts, and prior hearing of interested parties," have been disregarded, and that "citizens covered by this support—announced as automatic—have been repeatedly redirected from service to service, unable to obtain the information they sought."

Furthermore, it emphasized, the IT platforms in use "are fragile and inadequate for their purpose, contributing to severe delays and difficulties in obtaining information."

The complaints received this year also reveal the "extreme delay" until the start of support payments. Once payments begin, only a single monthly amount is delivered, "with no indication of when the due retroactive payments will be paid."

"In several situations, citizens allege that their social and economic situation has worsened due to government failures, and they also express profound distrust in a legal solution designed to support them," the Ombudsman's Office noted.

Some of the "systemic failures" in this support had already been highlighted in the last two annual reports submitted to the National Assembly, the Ombudsman's Office noted.