A Right Distorted? The Reconfiguration of Social Housing Policy Under Portugal’s 1st Right Program

This article examines the policy drift of the 1st Right , Portugal’s main housing program, originally designed to guarantee the right to adequate housing for families in situations of severe deprivation. This study aims to analyze how the program’s integration into the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) reconfigured its redistributive objectives. Taking the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA) as a critical case, this study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining systematic documentary and legislative analysis (2018–2025), discourse analysis of official communications, and empirical analysis of 18 municipal Local Housing Strategies, supplemented by financial execution data from RRP monitoring reports. The results reveal three interlinked forms of policy drift: (i) territorial deviation, driven by unequal municipal capacities and resource absorption; (ii) instrumental deviation, resulting from the prioritization of rehabilitation of pre-existent public housing stock over the provision of new housing; and (iii) social deviation, marked by the expansion of eligibility criteria that extend benefits to middle-income groups. Together, these dynamics demonstrate how a social-rights-based housing policy can be reshaped when integrated into a financial recovery framework, such as the RRP. This article contributes to international debates on housing governance by demonstrating how multilevel financing mechanisms can reinforce territorial inequalities, reorient policy instruments, and dilute redistributive objectives—even within ostensibly progressive recovery frameworks. It concludes by advocating for stronger social performance monitoring, differentiated instruments for distinct target groups, and improved temporal alignment between social policy objectives and EU funding cycles.