Council wants to construct hotel to take in “people in situations of special vulnerability”
Mouraria, a historic Lisbon neighbourhood transformed by immigration, is fighting a council plan to create a so-called ‘social hotel’ – a building to provide temporary accommodation to people of special vulnerability.
According to SIC Notícias, residents, shopkeepers and even the parish council are against the plan.
It is not that they are against the idea of a social hotel, per se – just not in Mouraria, which already has enough social problems without bringing in more.
As one Portuguese shopkeeper told the news channel: “We like the project for a social hotel, we just don’t want it here. We already have enough poverty here: we have a support bureau for drug addicts; we (still) have drugs, we have prostitution. The neighbourhood does not need any more poverty”.
Another told SIC that what the area needs is “people to come and live here; we need families here, to make a new neighbourhood…”
But it is not this simple: the decision to create the hotel by transforming an empty property appears already to have been made, in spite of local opposition.
Says SIC, “with an investment of two million euros, the building, which should be ready by 2026, will have a maximum occupancy of 29 users.
“Although the proposal has already been unanimously approved (by Lisbon City Council, deliberating far from the streets of Mouraria), Miguel Coelho, president of the local parish of Santa Maria Maior, refuses to accept it.
“We are100 metres from an assisted consumption room (the drug support bureau). We already know how these things play out. We’re going to have a huge concentration of people here who can’t fit inside, we’re going to have syringes on the floor, consumption in the street, scenes of fighting every day”.
Coelho would much rather see the renovation work due to move forwards used to create affordable homes for people to rent.
“There is a programme that the parish council announced and the City Council accepted called ‘Return to the neighbourhood’ – to create conditions for all those people who used to live here and were forced to leave”, he explains. So why has the council come up with a plan instead for a social hotel?
Mayor calls for solidarity
And here we have one of the reasons why Lisbon City Council may well change its politics in the looming municipal elections (taking place late summer/ early autumn). Mayor Carlos Moedas maintains “there is no relationship” between the plan for a hotel and the climate of insecurity that characterises Mouraria.
“Security is a problem in itself”, he admits, referring to the capital as a whole. “It is a concern we should have, but it has no connection here, neither to homeless people, nor to immigrants.
“All parishes should welcome people who are homeless”, he added. “We all have to take part. I am just asking for solidarity from everyone”.
That said, a demonstration is due to go ahead in Mouraria this afternoon, on the site of the future ‘social hotel’ in Rua Olarias, under the banner: “Social Hotel, no; accessible rent, yes”. ND
Source material: SIC Notícias
