The municipality of Alentejo announced, that the Temporary Night Shelter (ANT), created at the Estádio Dr. Flávio dos Santos, was closed on March 15, after all its occupants had been rehoused.

In accordance with the city council, the process was coordinated with the Beja District Security Center, which allowed 10 people to be integrated into Social Emergency Accommodation Centers (CAES) and Temporary Reception Structures (EAT).

“With this technical support, it was also possible to find a response in companies with private accommodation and rentals for people who were employed, but unable to rent a house”, added the city council in a note to reporters.

The Beja City Council also reported that “by their own initiative”, the remaining ANT users “were relocated to other regions of the country, where they found other employment opportunities and better living conditions”.

“Within a month, thanks to all the networking of the entities involves in this process”, it was possible to “finalise a difficult task, a problem that has existed for years”, highlighted the municipality.

On February 12, a total of 35 immigrants who occupied a vacant building in Beja, owned by the company Infraestruturas de Portugal and leased by the Cruz Vermelha Portuguesa (CVP), were temporarily rehoused by the city council while they waited for a place in other areas.

The temporary rehousing solution was the installation of 11 containers at the Estádio Dr. Flávio dos Santos, nine of which served as dormitories, one as a changing room and shower facility and the other as support.

The mayor of Beja, Paulo Arsénio, explained this relocation was part of an agreement with CVP to vacate the building in question.

“It was a space which progressively, in recent years, has been illegally occupied by the migrant population and which does not have even the lowest habitability conditions”, he stressed.

As part of this agreement with the CVP, the council committed to relocating the homeless people who occupied the building and to cleaning the interior and exterior of the space, after those people left, the mayor added.

In a statement released on March 19, the Chamber of Beja disclosed that the entire process had the collaboration of Cáritas Diocesana de Beja, Lar Nobre Freire and the Centro Social Cultural e Recreativo do Bairro da Esperança.

The ESTAR association also supported the municipality “in terms of food, daily monitoring and integration of these people into the job market", in conjunction with technicians from the municipality’s Divisão de Desemvolimento e Inovação Social.