Amadora has a policy of not building more ghettos

The mayor of Amadora says he has a policy of not building any more public housing ghettos in the densely populated 24-square-kilometre area, where about 800 families are waiting for a better housing solution.

“Also taking into account the characteristics of the municipality, we have, in fact, four units of public housing: the Zambujal area, Casal do Silva, Casal da Boba and Casal da Mira,” Carla Tavares Luce said of 30- during the summer the Special Resettlement Program (PER), which the municipality of Amadora in Lisbon district signed only in October 1995, two years after the plan was officially approved.

The official explained that resettlement is a particularly difficult issue when you have “a small area, one of the most densely populated in the country” and public housing is already “above the national percentage.”

“We have about 2,880 housing units – 3.2% of the housing is public housing, and also, taking into account the characteristics of the municipality, we basically have four apartments. And we had a policy not to build more state ghettos, trying to support people as much as possible through gratuitous support and municipal programs by optimizing vacant housing in a private park,” he stressed.

Carla Tavares spoke to Lusa in Damaya, next to land formerly occupied by the Estrela de Africa and 6 de Mayo districts, whose last dilapidated houses were demolished by the municipality about two years ago.

The socialist recalled that a new microdistrict was not built for the resettlement of these residents. Rather, “housing stock has been streamlined” in four public housing districts, also in this case using grant support.

The municipality of Amadora was “by political choice” the last to sign an agreement to join the PER, initiated by the government to destroy the so-called barracks in urban areas. At the time, the municipality had “approximately 26,000 people living in the 34 districts listed” in the program.

As the first measure of public housing policy, according to the mayor, PER was important because it allowed to eradicate neighborhoods in which people lived in an unworthy situation. “It is a pity that later, over the years, it was not updated,” he complained.

“All the communities that lived in our neighborhoods have lived here for many years. These are communities that settled in the early 1970s, and therefore the 6 de Mayo district, the Estrela de Africa district, was no different from other realities. other areas,” he said.

Carla Tavares also recalled the neighborhoods of Fontañas, Azul, Altos dos Trigueiros, Quinta do Conde Araujo, Quinta da Conceicao, Fonte dos Passarinhos and Azinhaga dos Besuros, which also disappeared.

It has always been about “complex processes of success and failure” striving to find “even in families not registered with PER, alternatives and solutions that have survived a variety of situations.”

“We are often asked why these processes are not much faster. These are complex processes, we are talking about people. very lengthy processes,” he admitted, reacting to criticism from the population and from associations defending the right to decent housing.

He ensured that in this area of ​​Damai the goal of the municipality was “not to carry out any construction”. The old street 6 de Maio will have a traffic distribution lane to facilitate access to the CRIL (Regional Inner Belt of Lisbon) and from which will emerge the new Social Center 6 de Maio built from scratch.

On the remaining land, partly private, the idea is to provide space for the enjoyment of the population, as happened with the Parque Aventura, built after the eradication of the underground area on Ribeira da Falageira.

Regarding the so-called PER areas, Carla Tavares said that all that remains to be resolved is the Quinta da Laje case, which is “already at a more advanced stage”, and the Estrada Militar.

“Estrada Militar has very specific social characteristics, more complex than Quinta da Laje, and therefore it is a process that we are also working on, which does not happen at the same speed, because the social reality is also completely different. “, he acknowledged.

According to the municipality, when Amadora signed the PER protocol, there were 4,855 emergency homes registered in 1995, housing 6,138 families.

As a result of survey updates over the years, it was found that families living in buildings have changed either through natural growth or through the arrival of new families and the abandonment/death of others, so that the number of census households has increased. to 7,406 (1,268 more than the original number).

Of this total, 809 are still in need of alternative housing.

Between 1995 and April of this year, Câmara da Amadora resettled 2,591 families and paid rent to 1,542 more families. Another 2465 families found themselves in other situations, depending on the municipality, such as death, marriage, or social autonomy / abandonment of areas.