The focus is on the initial 17 plots out of a total of 35 plots and 100 houses that were in an illegal situation, part of the Illegal Origin Urban Area (AUGI) in Lugar da Costeira, Alvarães parish.
The president of the Viana do Castelo City Council, Luís Nobre (PS), commented in a municipal statement, describing the event as “the resolution of an impasse lasting more than 50 years in the lives of Alvarães families,” providing them with “greater security and stability, in a process whose costs have been fully covered by the municipality.”
In January 2023, the transfer of 35 plots included in the AUGI from the parish council to the city council was completed, as noted by the municipality.
The proposal “AUGI of Alvarães – Social Housing Neighborhoods” was initiated by the Alvarães Parish Council with the City Council, aiming at regularizing a housing complex “consisting of 100 housing units, constructed over about 60 years in Lugar da Costeira, mostly without an approved project or municipal construction license,” according to the city council.
Within the AUGI perimeter are the social housing neighborhoods of Costeira or Nossa Senhora de Fátima (24 units) and S. José (10 units), which have been requalified under the Local Housing Strategy of Viana do Castelo.
In December 2022, the Alvarães Parish Assembly approved the free transfer of the 35 plots to the municipality and the gratuitous transmission of a plot for the construction of an additional 10 social housing units, the municipality recalls.
The AUGI (illegal origin urban areas) correspond to “clusters of constructions, based on the informal division of land, which either emerged before the first legal framework for urban subdivisions (1965), where most constructions were erected illegally (without a license), or emerged after that date without obtaining the necessary subdivision license,” it indicates.
The boundaries of these illegal origin urban areas are defined, either unofficially or at the request of interested parties, by municipal council resolutions, it adds.
