Porto Santo town council studies new ways to tackle the lack of affordable housing

The combination of scarce land and strong demand for second homes is forcing the council to explore new tools.

Public land as a lever

The council is considering making municipal plots available for resident housing.

Rental support and collaboration with local businesses

Rental support schemes for essential workers are being considered.

A problem that is starting to worry beyond housing itself

The difficulty in accessing decent housing is starting to affect the retention of skilled workers.

The pressure from second homes

Porto Santo, known above all for its golden beach, has for years attracted buyers from mainland Madeira and abroad looking for a second home, gradually pushing the local population towards increasingly limited and expensive housing options. Council officials acknowledge that this dynamic, beneficial for the island's economic activity, has as its direct counterpart the growing difficulty residents themselves face in accessing decent housing.

Municipal plots for residents

Among the measures under consideration is making municipally owned plots available exclusively for building resident housing, with clauses that would prevent their resale as second homes for a set period. Council sources explain that the aim is to prevent this land from also being absorbed by the very market the measure is meant to correct, although the legal design of these clauses is still under study.

Collaboration with the local business community

Tourism and retail businesses in Porto Santo have expressed interest in working with the council on rental support programmes for their own staff, aware that the difficulty of accessing housing is starting to make it harder to hire skilled personnel. Some already offer salary top-ups specifically to cover accommodation costs, a formula that could spread further if municipal initiatives take time to materialise.

A problem shared with Madeira

Porto Santo's situation is not unrelated to what Madeira itself is going through, where rising housing costs driven by tourism pressure have led the Autonomous Region to study similar measures involving public land and rental support. Regional officials believe any lasting solution for Porto Santo will need to be coordinated with housing policies designed at the regional level, given the municipality's small size and limited resources of its own.