Fragmented Consensus: Housing Conditions and Political Attitudes in Lisbon’s Right to Housing Protests

This paper investigates how housing conditions, political orientations, and sociodemographic factors shape the perceptions and demands of participants in the housing rights movement in Lisbon. Drawing on original data from the first protest survey on housing conducted in Portugal—complemented by in-depth interviews—we explore how protestors diagnose the causes of the housing crisis and what solutions they advocate. Contrary to views of protest movements as ideologically unified, our findings reveal a “fragmented consensus”: while participants broadly agree on the systemic nature of the housing crisis, their interpretations of responsibility and preferred solutions vary significantly. Protestors consistently identify the state as a central actor—both through action and inaction—but diverge in the extent to which they also blame private actors such as landlords, corporate investors, or digital rental platforms. Similarly, their policy preferences range from calls for structural reforms and large-scale public provision to more pragmatic regulatory or transitional measures. Using both regression models and a typology derived from interview data, we show that these differences are shaped by individuals’ housing situations, place of residence, political ideology, and levels of engagement. The paper contributes to the literature on housing politics, social movements, and protester diversity by demonstrating how lived housing precarity intersects with political subjectivity and generates differentiated repertoires of critique and action within a common movement space.