The relocation to the mainland of 49 families from the fishing village area on Faro Island, has been announced by Faro Council.
Mayor, Rogério Bacalhau said that the number of families roughly corresponds to half of the fishing community of Faro Island and that their properties will be torn down when families have been removed to the mainland.
Those that are expecting to be moved to the Montenegro area are those, “that today no longer have direct activity connected to the sea and the Ria Formosa," added the mayor.
Rogério Bacalhau was speaking to the press on the site of the future accommodation in the parish of Montenegro, and said that the project start date is, “scheduled for mid-2020. The 49 families, a total of 122 people, are expected to be re-housed in 2022 or, at best in 2021."
According to Faro Council’s social housing programme, of the 49 units to be built, 22 will be T1, 15 will be T2 and 12 will be T3. No building budget was suggested by the mayor.
Rents will be payable to the Council according to incomes and most of the families are expected to be at the lower end of the earnings scale.
As for the remaining 49 families at the fishing village area on the island, there is no solution and they remain in what the Council refers to as “substandard housing.”
"We are talking to the families and to the government to try to find solutions to relocate them to accommodation with better living conditions, but we do not have a solution right now," said the mayor, admitting that the remaining families all work in the artisan fishing industry so will have to be re-housed in pretty much the same place.
"We are talking about those who, in some way, live from shell-fishing or from fishing in the Ria Formosa. Ideally, we must find a solution whereby they can be re-located by the sea, where they can take care of their boats and their equipment by the beach," said the mayor.
This is all part of the government’s scheme to rid the Ria Formosa islands of inconvenient people in inconvenient places.
After the forced relocation process is completed, the current fishermen's houses on Faro Beach will be demolished and the area turned back to a natural state of sand and dunes.
The mayor did not say whether these families had been consulted over their relocation, nor did he give an overall cost for this exercise in social engineering.
Comments
If they had used this argument in the first place, perhaps there would have been less heartache. But as you point out, Ed, there is no recognisable source of finance for the new social housing, which in any case will not attract rents which are sustainable.