At a public discussion organized by the Diocese of Angra, architects, a sociologist, and Church representatives confront soaring housing costs, the consequences of tourism and global investment, and the growing distance between the right to housing and the reality facing Azorean families.
A home should be the beginning of security, not the measure of a family’s economic vulnerability. It is where children discover belonging, where generations share their lives, and where the ordinary dignity of human existence finds its most intimate expression. Yet across the Azores, as elsewhere in Portugal and much of the world, housing has increasingly become a source of anxiety rather than reassurance. The rising cost of purchasing or renting a home, combined with incomes that have failed to keep pace, is transforming what should be a fundamental condition of a stable life into an increasingly difficult aspiration. Behind every statistic lies a human reality: a young couple postponing independence, an elderly person confronting uncertainty, or a family whose earnings no longer guarantee access to adequate shelter. It is this contradiction between housing as a human right and housing as a financial commodity that brought together architects, academics, and representatives of the Catholic Church for an important public discussion organized by the Faith and Culture Commission of the Diocese of Angra.
The roundtable, entitled Living with Dignity: Who Has a Place in Today’s Society?, examined the right to housing, human dignity, and the challenges of creating more inclusive and humane communities. Among the participants were architect Helena Roseta, who joined remotely, Nuno Costa, President of the Regional Section of the Portuguese Order of Architects, sociologist Fernando Diogo, and Carmo Rodeia, spokesperson for the Diocese of Angra. Their contributions approached the housing crisis from different professional and ethical perspectives but converged on a central concern: the growing inability of ordinary citizens to secure decent housing is no longer merely a question of real estate prices. It has become a challenge involving public policy, social cohesion, economic inequality, and the credibility of democratic institutions.
Helena Roseta placed the Azorean housing crisis within a broader international transformation. She argued that real estate markets have changed fundamentally through financial globalization and the expansion of mass tourism, creating a situation in which local housing markets are increasingly exposed to international demand. Housing supply remains geographically limited because homes must occupy physical land, while potential buyers may come from virtually anywhere in the world. This imbalance, she maintained, places local residents at a disadvantage, particularly when their wages cannot compete with the purchasing power of outside investors. Roseta warned that the consequences include precarious accommodation, irregular rental arrangements, overcrowded homes, and an increasing number of people unable to enter the housing market. In her assessment, the erosion of access to adequate housing is also undermining public confidence in democracy.
The figures she presented concerning the Azores illustrate the seriousness of the problem. According to Roseta, publicly owned housing represents only approximately 2.3 percent of the Region’s housing stock, while local housing strategies have identified around 3,000 situations involving inadequate living conditions—a figure she believes may underestimate the true scale of need. She attributed the regional pressures to a combination of tourism, international demand, the particular constraints of insularity, and comparatively low incomes. She also challenged the assumption that constructing additional homes would, by itself, resolve the crisis, pointing to vacant properties that are neither available for sale nor offered for rent. Her central argument was that housing policy requires a much wider range of interventions than increasing construction alone.
Roseta described this approach as a toolbox containing four principal instruments: public housing, fiscal measures, subsidies, and regulation. She argued that the limited proportion of public housing restricts the authorities’ capacity to influence the wider market. Tax measures can affect incentives and behavior, while subsidies may provide immediate assistance to households experiencing financial pressure. However, she cautioned that excessive reliance on subsidies can contribute to further price increases if underlying market conditions remain unchanged. Regulation, in her view, is the most difficult but indispensable instrument, requiring governments to establish clear rules governing housing markets. She also expressed concern about proposed changes to rental legislation under discussion in Portugal’s Parliament, arguing that they could aggravate existing difficulties. These were her assessments of the policy options and legislative proposals, rather than conclusions shared necessarily by all participants.
For Roseta, the housing question is inseparable from the Portuguese Constitution’s recognition of the right to housing and from the social responsibilities of democratic government. Yet she also insisted that citizens must become active participants in the search for solutions. Public accountability, transparency, community mobilization, and direct engagement with vulnerable populations are essential, she argued. Drawing attention to initiatives undertaken through the Portuguese Order of Architects, including Brigada 65, she emphasized the importance of learning from people who confront difficult housing conditions every day. Their ingenuity, resilience, and mutual solidarity, she suggested, should inform the work of professionals and institutions seeking to improve living conditions.
Nuno Costa focused on weaknesses in regional planning and implementation. He revealed that six Azorean municipalities had not prepared local housing strategies, potentially missing opportunities to secure funding through Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) for addressing inadequate housing conditions. He identified possible contributing factors, including shortages of qualified technical personnel in some municipalities and insufficient institutional follow-up. Rather than treating these shortcomings as isolated administrative failures, Costa called for an examination of the obstacles that prevented available resources from being effectively mobilized. He also noted that rising property prices and rents had not been matched by comparable wage increases and pointed to the relatively limited investment in housing compared with other public policy areas.
His principal proposal was the creation of a Regional Housing Plan capable of providing an integrated, interdisciplinary assessment of the archipelago’s housing needs. Such a plan, he argued, would allow policymakers and professionals to establish a more comprehensive diagnosis and develop coordinated strategic measures. The importance of this proposal lies in recognizing that the Azores cannot address housing pressures solely through disconnected municipal initiatives. Although conditions vary among islands and municipalities, common challenges involving affordability, planning, public investment, and administrative capacity require regional coordination. A coherent strategy could also help clarify responsibilities and improve the use of financial and technical resources.
Sociologist Fernando Diogo, one of the coordinators of a housing report recently submitted to the Regional Government, was equally emphatic about the need for political intervention. He argued that the crisis has reached a scale that cannot be resolved through the ordinary functioning of the economy alone. Housing insecurity, he observed, now extends into the middle class, making the issue a concern for a much broader segment of society. To illustrate the growing disparity between property values and household incomes, Diogo stated that the price per square meter in Ponta Delgada increased by more than 200 percent between 2015 and 2025, while wages experienced nothing approaching a comparable rise. His conclusion was that the solution must be political, although this does not necessarily mean that the Regional Government alone should assume every financial burden associated with the crisis.
The participation of the Diocese of Angra introduced an additional dimension: the moral responsibility of institutions toward those excluded from adequate housing. Carmo Rodeia, speaking to Antena 1 Açores, described housing as a question of human dignity and characterized the crisis as a profound human wound affecting both younger and older generations. She emphasized that the Church does not claim to possess miraculous solutions or seek to replace government, but wishes to encourage serious public debate. Rodeia also addressed the potential contribution of Church-owned property, explaining that, wherever possible, the Diocese seeks to place available assets at the service of disadvantaged people rather than subjecting them to speculative pricing. Her remarks reflected an understanding of social responsibility in which institutions are called upon not only to discuss inequality but also to consider how their own resources might contribute to alleviating it.
The debate raises questions extending well beyond the immediate housing difficulties of the Azores. What happens to an island community when young people cannot afford to establish independent households? How can municipalities retain essential workers when salaries no longer correspond to local living costs? What becomes of demographic renewal when families must postpone decisions about children, employment, or permanent residence because housing has become unattainable? And how should communities balance the economic opportunities associated with tourism and international investment against the need to ensure that local residents are not gradually priced out of their own towns and neighborhoods? These questions do not have simple answers, but they demonstrate why housing policy cannot be separated from regional development, social justice, or the long-term sustainability of island life.
For Azoreans and their descendants in North America, the discussion carries a particular resonance. Generations of emigrants left the islands in search of economic security, frequently making homeownership a central expression of their achievements abroad. Today, the relationship between the diaspora and the islands includes tourism, family property, investment, and the continuing desire of many descendants to maintain a connection with their ancestral communities. These relationships can contribute positively to regional life, but they also invite reflection upon the responsibilities accompanying investment in places where housing affordability has become increasingly difficult for permanent residents. Preserving the vitality of the Azores requires ensuring that their towns and villages remain communities in which people can live, work, raise families, and grow old—not merely destinations to visit or properties to acquire.
The roundtable organized by the Faith and Culture Commission was significant precisely because it refused to reduce housing to a single economic or administrative question. The perspectives of Roseta, Costa, Diogo, and Rodeia revealed the importance of combining public policy, professional knowledge, democratic participation, and ethical responsibility. Their contributions did not establish a single agreed solution, but they underscored the need for coordinated action and a deeper recognition of housing as an essential dimension of human dignity.
And perhaps that is where the discussion must ultimately return: to the meaning of a home in the life of a person and the identity of a community. The Azores have long been a place from which people departed because economic circumstances offered too little security. The contemporary challenge is to ensure that those who wish to remain are not compelled to leave because the cost of living has made their own islands inaccessible. A society cannot measure its prosperity solely by the value of its properties, the expansion of its tourism industry, or the volume of investment it attracts. It must also ask whether its children can imagine a future within it, whether its elderly can live without fear, and whether its working families can enjoy the stability their labor should make possible.
For a home is more than a building, and a community is more than a collection of properties. The true measure of a society is whether it continues to make room for its own people.
Based on the report by Frederico Figueiredo concerning the roundtable “Habitar com dignidade: quem tem lugar na sociedade de hoje?”, organized by the Faith and Culture Commission of the Diocese of Angra, with contributions from Helena Roseta, Nuno Costa, Fernando Diogo, and Carmo Rodeia and published in Correio dos Açores.