HOUSING INTENDED FOR THE HOMELESS IN FUNCHAL STILL UNUSED

The councilors elected by Trust in the Funchal Chamber visited the rehabilitated municipal building where the ‘Solidarity Housing’ project should be operating and, according to a statement released this Sunday, they found the space “empty and without any use.”

“This space, which should accommodate four homeless people since August, remains closed and vacant, at a time when solutions are required for the growing social vulnerabilities that Funchal has been presenting”, says the same note.

The coalition recalls that the rehabilitation of this building, owned by the City Council, located on the corner between Rua dos Ilhéus and Avenida Luís de Camões, “was awarded by Confiança, still in the previous mandate, representing an investment of 153 thousand euros.”

“The current president, receiving the building as an inheritance with an elaborate project and ongoing rehabilitation works, announced that he intended to allocate the house to a ‘pioneer project for homeless people’. In fact, this project of ‘Solidarity Housing’, It is a copy of a social integration project by Confiança, called ‘Shared Housing’ and opened in 2020, aimed at homeless people and which functioned as transitional accommodation in the parish of São Roque”, he says.

In July of this year, he continues, a Cooperation Protocol was approved, with the favorable votes of the Confiança councillors, between the Municipality of Funchal, the Social Security Institute of Madeira and the Associação Protectora dos Pobres with a view, where the president of the Câmara announced not only that this house would be occupied in August by four homeless people, but also the creation of a new ‘Solidarity Housing’ in the Barreiros area.

“It is inadmissible that after announcing this project, and knowing that the housing shortages of so many families in Funchal are known, the president of the CMF has kept this house ready and closed for four months”, accuses councilwoman Micaela Camacho, recalling that “ this is also a reflection of the instability we have been witnessing in the area of ​​social matters, with councilors coming and going”.

In the balance of these 14 months in office, the mayor concludes that “these are lies and unfulfilled promises that are accumulating and that, despite attempts to mask reality with propaganda pages, time is in charge of revealing to the eyes of the people of Funchal , while in practice Funchal’s social vulnerabilities are getting worse”.

From Jornal Madeira