Loulé’s mayor wants to increase the land available for construction in many of the council area’s villages to help stop communities fading away.
"You have to create jobs and housing to stop the depopulation of rural areas," says Vítor Aleixo, who is convinced that an essential part of the solution is to increase the building zone around villages by reviewing and altering the hallowed Municipal Master Plan (PDM).
"Almost 90% of the municipality of Loulé has conditions that impede construction with the Natura 2000 area occupying 51% of the territory, ecological land covering 14% and the agricultural land another 13%," says Aleixo, adding that "Natura 2000 means nothing can be built, and for ecological and agricultural zones, building is allowable as long as there already is a ruin and a favorable opinion from various controlling bodies."
"It is not a peculiarity of Loulé, it is a characteristic of the Algarve", said Aleixo in an interview with Público.
Many people, especially the young, cannot afford to live in the Loulé area as its average property price of €206,857 is way over the national average €87,11, and an Algarve value of €133,510, inflated, says the mayor, “by foreigners,” omitting to mention that it is these very foreigners which pay the high property and water rates for which Loulé is noted.
Aleixo, in this 2017 local council election year, says he is going to "review the PDM and increase the perimeter of villages in the hills."
"Sometimes there are young people who want to set themselves up in places they have inherited and face serious administrative barriers."
The mayor does not rule out the possibility of creating a housing package to help people in the most unpopulated areas.
The council already has been buying vacant or ruined houses to fix up and let out in the village of Ameixial for which it has applied for an EU grant.
The Algarve’s mayors this year will be announcing all sorts of vote-winning initiatives focusing on children, the young, pensioners and schools which, when they are re-elected, quietly will be dropped as "too expensive, no grant available, administrative problems..."
Aleixo is on safe political ground in slagging off foreigners as few foreign residents register to vote.
