The contract was awarded to the consortium Rui Vilaça Pinheiro, Lda./J.C.C.A., Lda., and the eight planned buildings will be used for a community centre and subsidised rental housing for families unable to access the private market, the Portimão City Council stated in a press release.

"On Thursday, 6 August, the Portimão City Council awarded the contract for the construction of 204 housing units in the Coca Maravilhas neighbourhood, the largest public housing project ever undertaken in the municipality, with an investment of €27,702,223.38," it informed.

This investment will allow for an “effective reinforcement of the public housing stock” in the municipality, in the Faro district, with the construction of “new houses on plots that currently have no buildings”.

“The intervention includes the construction of eight buildings and the roads that will serve the complex. The 204 units are divided into 23 one-bedroom apartments, 140 two-bedroom apartments and 41 three-bedroom apartments, in a range designed to meet different family compositions. The residential buildings are developed between four and five floors above the threshold level,” he characterised.

The Portimão City Council highlighted that, of the eight buildings planned, “seven are residential” and the other “is entirely intended for the development of a community centre, with services for municipal use”.

The project has a completion deadline of 360 days, is financed by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), through the 1st Right Program – Housing Access Support Program, and is part of the Local Housing Strategy of the Municipality of Portimão.

“This is the most demanding commitment that this municipality has undertaken in terms of housing, and it is also the most necessary. We are talking about 204 families in Portimão who today cannot afford a house on the rental market and who will now have decent housing, with conditions and at an affordable price,” said the Mayor, Álvaro Bila, quoted in the note.