Geographer defends greater mobility in the housing market

2023-05-03 15:33:00

Defender of the “adoption of a social housing policy, to the detriment of a social housing policy”, Pedro Calado, from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, underlined, this Wednesday, the importance of having “greater transience, mobility and social mix” in this area.

“We need to have a greater possibility of mobility within the housing market. If I change jobs, I must be able to find housing close to that job”, maintained the geographer, exemplifying the situation of a citizen residing in the North of the country who have to go to work in the Algarve region.

Speaking at the conference “Relationships in the context of social housing”, which took place this Wednesday morning at the headquarters of the municipal company GaiUrb, in Vila Nova de Gaia, the deputy director of Gulbenkian went back in history to the Industrial Revolution, to explain how the first working-class neighborhoods emerged, and recalled that “the social mix is ​​fundamental for the cohesion of society”.

For the specialist, it is also important to “encourage the promotion of new housing at controlled costs by municipalities, IPSS, cooperatives and/or others only when there is no possibility of rehabilitation and requalification”.

Joana Azevedo, from GaiUrb, recalled, on the panel dedicated to common space management models in social undertakings, that the Câmara de Gaia “has been investing in other measures [de apoio à habitação] in addition to supported leasing, which by itself does not respond to the problems”. The coordinator of the Social Action unit of the municipal company highlighted, for example, the Arco-Íris Program, which provides access to leasing, under advantageous conditions, to young people and low-income households.

With a different model, as it does not have a Social Action service, Domus Social, which manages social housing in the city of Porto, has a recent project called “A manager, a story”, dedicated to entrance managers of municipal housing and with the objective of “valuing this figure”, who, as Luísa Santos pointed out, “has a very close relationship with the technicians” of the company.

In turn, Sónia Pereira, from MatosinhosHabit, made it known that the company is “training residents to better maintain and manage common spaces”. “The technicians go to the field to listen to all the residents, in order to understand the main problems of their entry”, explained the person in charge.

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