Lisbon Housing Crisis Local Displacement

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Next up is number seven. We've been talking about this one a lot lately.

[00:00:04]Lisbon in Portugal. Lisbon was the first EU capital to go all in on welcoming digital nomads. I've interviewed guys who live there and then came here. It worked at first beautifully, right? For about 4 years, 5 years, and then it started to work too well, right? The housing crisis is real in Lisbon now, and it's well-documented, and it's the subject of active government backtracking. They're literally changing the laws they put in place to try and get people like us to come and live there. Local families have been pushed out of the city centers. It's literally changing the entire urban-suburban landscape in the country. Entire blocks have been converted to these short-term rentals, and it's the same story you're seeing around the world, right? On June 15th, there were coordinated protests across Portugal, including in Lisbon itself, specifically about the displacement of the locals and basically protest against foreign residents and expats. So, the InterNations data on Lisbon shows expats increasingly find the social integration difficult into the country, not because the city is unfriendly, but because the city is basically resentful at this point. And resentment and unfriendliness produce the same lived-in experience when you're the one outside and you've just arrived looking for friends. I said it in another video, but the reality is you're not early to Lisbon anymore, and it's probably not the place you want to go when you're too late. In some neighborhoods, you're basically going to be part of the problem if you move to Lisbon now. Whether you intend it or not, that's just the reality of the situation today.