Lack of affordable housing remains one of the Algarve’s largest issues
The president of the region’s largest hotel association said on Friday that the Algarve’s hoteliers want to build housing to retain workers and combat the labour shortage in the tourism sector. As such, they are asking the government to make land available at affordable prices.
Speaking to Lusa, the president of the Association of Hotels and Tourist Developments in the Algarve (AHETA), Hélder Martins, lamented that hoteliers’ request “that has been made repeatedly for at least two years to various ministers and secretaries of state, has still not been granted.”
“We have been asking for plots of land that can be made available at acceptable prices, not market prices, to build social housing for hotel workers,” he said.
According to Hélder Martins, the lack of “decent, affordable housing” is the first problem that needs to be tackled to fight the “lack of labour in tourism and to retain talent in the region,” which is struggling with a labour shortage in the sector.
“In the last two years alone, I’ve presented the proposal to various ministers and secretaries of state, but so far we’ve had no response, despite the fact that everyone considers the proposal to be very good,” he told Lusa.
The head of AHETA believes that “this is the ideal time” to meet the hoteliers’ demands, given that the municipal master plans (PDM), which are planning and land-use instruments, are being revised.
“We think it’s the ideal time to introduce this demand: the creation of a collection of land so that it can be sold off at market prices and used to build housing under the social housing scheme,” Martins said.
The aim “is to be able to build housing of various types, outside areas of tourist influence, four or five kilometres away from the hotel, to later be made available to employees,” he said.
He said he hoped that the proposal, which was also presented to political parties during the election campaign, “could be followed up in the short term since all the parties have agreed to it”.
Solving the housing shortage in the Algarve has also become a priority strategy for hotel entrepreneurs in terms of recruiting labour for the sector, a problem that has been getting worse in recent years.
Source: LUSA
