They say that in Ancient Rome, marriage was avoided if the man didn’t have a home beforehand. Now we’re back to those times, with young people spending more and more time at home with their parents and not wanting to get married because it’s impossible to get a house at a price commensurate with one’s salary.
This week, the Regional Parliament discussed the housing problem. Our conclusion is that no political force, no MP, nor the government has reasonable and effective solutions to solve a problem that has been going on for dozens of years.
Some want to suspend land-use planning, and others think that putting money from EU funds into the problem will solve it.
Even if there was plenty of money for the sector (which there may well be), it would be difficult to find the manpower to build houses on these islands, especially with public policies in this area concentrated on just two islands (then they complain about desertification on the others). Just now, the INE (the National Statistics Institute) said that the cost of building new housing increased by 3.1% in February compared to the same month last year, influenced almost exclusively by the increase in the price of labor and materials.
Eurostat also said that in the fourth quarter of 202,4, house prices rose by 4.2% in the Eurozone and 4.9% in the European Union (EU), with Portugal recording the third-highest increase (11.6%) compared to the same period last year.
If this is the case in open markets of the size we know in Europe, imagine it in a geographical area like ours, where labor is scarce and materials are priced absurdly.
As we have already warned, what is even more striking in this story of housing in the Azores is that the government and local authorities are building new plots and houses, leaving the uninhabited houses in the centers of the parishes, which look like ghost towns, abandoned.
Worse, the public authorities encourage new construction in concentrated doses without creating the necessary social facilities to respond to the new populations, such as accessibility, crèches for children, or occupations for the elderly.
Some parishes have doubled their population in the last decade, and the public authorities pretend they don’t see it, ignoring the investments this entails for any growing community.
In this housing story, the authorities lack great will and competence and lack organized guidance.
Everything works according to who has the most influence in the corridors of decision-makers and the number of times leaders are patted on the back with assumed reverence.
. You can blame local accommodation (Airbnb’s), inflation, the banks, and the land, but the story doesn’t hold water.
It’s all a question of will and rightness.
It’s not even about money.

Osvaldo Cabral
Editorial Diário dos Açores 13-04-2025

Osvaldo Cabral is the Executive Director of the newspaper Diário dos Açores.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from various leading thinkers, writers, and editorial boards from the Azores to give the diaspora and those interested in the current Azores a sense of the significant opinions on some of the archipelago’s issues.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL).