Families in Vila Franca de Xira's Shacks Still Wait for a Rehousing Date, While the Council Vows to Demolish Every Illegal Home

Thirty-seven people living in shacks with no running water, electricity or sanitation in two neighbourhoods of Vila Franca de Xira, on the northern edge of the Lisbon metropolitan area, are still waiting to be told when they will be rehoused, more than five years after their homes were listed in the council's housing strategy. The council now says every illegal and precarious dwelling in the municipality will be demolished "in due course".

The two clusters, Clarimundo and Tardoz da Improsit, are in the parish of Sobralinho. The news agency Lusa, which first reported from there about six months ago, returned in the last week of September and found nothing had changed, it reported on Sunday.

A census, then silence

On 21 July the Polícia de Segurança Pública (Public Security Police, PSP) led an operation in both neighbourhoods with council inspection, environmental and social work teams. It identified 11 precarious homes "occupied legally", where the 37 people live, and 11 empty and abandoned structures marked for demolition.

Residents told Lusa the officials took down the names of every household, including the children, and promised that the empty shacks would be knocked down and that the families would be rehoused, but gave no date. Lusa found them still standing at the end of September, along with the shells of burnt-out cars and appliances. One resident said the council wanted to "clean up the image" of the area; another warned that the shacks are built so close together that knocking one down could bring down its neighbours.

People described fetching water by wheelbarrow from a public fountain, washing children in a basin before school and going out into the fields for want of a toilet. Last winter, they said, residents weighed down their improvised roofs with tiles, tyres and stones, and some had to sleep under a balcony during a storm. One woman said she had applied for council housing in more draws than she can count and has never got beyond the reserve list.

What the council says

The Câmara Municipal de Vila Franca de Xira (Vila Franca de Xira Council), led by the Socialist Fernando Paulo Ferreira, told Lusa that the people eligible for rehousing in both areas "are identified" and that its services are working to "eradicate" the settlements. It did not answer Lusa's question about the plan and timetable for rehousing the families named in its Estratégia Local de Habitação (Local Housing Strategy), drawn up in 2021 under the national 1.º Direito (First Right) housing programme. Asked about the end of European recovery funding for housing, from which the municipality has benefited, it said the strategy runs beyond the Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência (Recovery and Resilience Plan) and that "other financial instruments" exist.

At a council meeting on 27 July the mayor said the families were followed "very closely" by social services and that the council would not allow anyone new to settle there.

The opposition Coligação Nova Geração (PSD and IL) says it has had no answers either. Its leader on the council, David Pato, told Lusa that demolition is not the solution, asked whether families would be "left on the street", and said doing nothing "keeps the ghetto". He wants the residents rehoused in decent homes, with the duty to pay rent and look after them.

Councils behind on social housing can now claim extra state funding if EU cohesion money also backs the homes, and the European Investment Bank has lent 1.5 billion euros for public housing.