Cascais City Council Aims To Invest €200MM In Housing

The Municipality of Cascais’ has announced that they aim to invest around €200 million by 2026.

In a news item on the Council’s website, the Municipality located on the Portuguese Riviera indicated that the investment goes parallel with its local housing strategy developed by its team alongside academics from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, to ensure access to decent housing for all and and to develop transformative housing policies.

“Housing is one of the areas of public policy in which the Portuguese most demand answers”, the Council stated. “Regardless of what the Central State does or does not do, in Cascais we have a defined path and we want to give answers to citizens: we are going to invest up to 200 million euros by 2026 to ensure housing for 4,085 families.”

However, the Local Housing Strategy (ELH) which has been unanimously approved at a Chamber Meeting paints a rough picture of the reality of Cascais with regard to the population eligible for the  1st Right Program.

In numbers: there are 10,212 people (4085 families) to relocate in Cascais. Of these, 6,276 people (2,384 families) are in a situation of housing shortage (they live in annexes, garages and other facilities without dignity); and 3936 people (1,701 families) in what is known as an economic deprivation situation (ie, they have a rented house but are on the verge of eviction due to economic difficulties).

“The shortage of housing is a problem that cuts across different classes and strata”, the Council indicated, implying that the solutions have to be different under a large public housing program that is not restricted to the needs identified in the 1st Law program .

Basically, the Council’s strategy factors in the rehabilitation of public housing stock, currently 2.8% of the total number of houses in the municipality, to reach 30% in the next few years.

Portugal’s seaside Council aims to provide enough housing for 4,085 families by 2026.

“We will rehabilitate the public housing stock, which currently accounts for 2.8% of the total number of houses in the municipality,” the seaside Council assured. “With the execution of our project, this number will reach 3.3%. Better but insufficient because our ambition is that public housing will tend, over the next few years, to reach 30% of the municipality's total housing stock. How did we get there? Cascais will enter on multiple fronts.”

On the construction front, the Council claims they have 800 new dwellings planned, backed by a whopping €165 million financing by Portuguese and European funding. The municipality has also endowed the 2022 municipal budget with funds for affordable programs for the vulnerable population including displaced teachers, health workers and students. 

As far as the Shared and collaborative housing is concerned, the Council indicated that they “want it to be the state of the art of holistic housing policies, reinventing first-generation social housing with shared services.” Likewise, the coastal council also aims to invest in neighbourhoods’ thermal comfort and environmental and energy sustainability, which the Council believes is an essential requirement for the 21st century that will benefit local families economically.

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