Alentejo opens €13.8M for public rental homes. Projects the recovery fund dropped can apply
Call ALT2030-2026-64, published on 6 November, funds Alentejo councils and inter-municipal bodies that build or refurbish public homes to let at affordable rents. The first round closes on 30 November, there are 14 rounds to the end of 2027 and the homes must stay affordable for 20 years. Projects that lost their recovery-plan funding are eligible.
Alentejo councils now have a dedicated line of EU money for public homes at affordable rents. Call ALT2030-2026-64 from the Alentejo 2030 programme, published on 6 November, puts €13.8 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) towards building or refurbishing public housing to rent below market.
It is not for private owners. The call says plainly that private housing is not supported.
Who can apply for Alentejo 2030’s affordable housing call?
Municipalities, the inter-municipal communities (CIM, groupings of councils in each sub-region) and municipal or inter-municipal companies in the Alentejo. Social-sector charities can come in as partners of a council, if they have signed a protocol to do so.
The Alentejo Litoral (Sines, Santiago do Cacém, Grândola, Alcácer do Sal and Odemira) is excluded, because it draws on the separate Just Transition Fund set up for areas hit by the closure of coal plants.
The money is split across four sub-regions:
- Alto Alentejo: €4,501,070
- Baixo Alentejo: €3,238,694
- Alentejo Central: €3,092,047
- Lezíria do Tejo: €2,968,189
Alto Alentejo, around Portalegre, gets the biggest slice, about a third of the total (32.6% by our count).
What happens to housing projects that missed the recovery-plan deadline?
This is the part that matters to a lot of people. The Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) ran to the end of August, and the government said it beat its target for new homes. But some projects did not finish in time and lost that funding.
This call gives them a second door. Under Decree-Law 165/2026 of 13 August, affordable-housing projects that had a PRR contract, had work under way and at least one PRR payment, and then had the support revoked, can now apply to Alentejo 2030. They still face a fresh financial and merit assessment like everyone else.
How much does the EU pay, and how much falls on councils?
The call sets a maximum co-financing rate of 25%. In practice the ERDF covers at most a quarter of eligible spending, and the rest has to come from elsewhere. By our sums, using up the full €13.8 million would take around €55.2 million of eligible investment.
Each project must cost more than €200,000 and arrive ready to build: approved construction design, permits in hand and a tender ready to launch. There is a long tail, too: funded homes cannot be taken out of affordable renting for 20 years.
When do applications close?
The first round closes at 6pm on 30 November 2026. After that there is one round a month, always at 6pm, up to the 14th on 30 December 2027. Applications go through the Balcão dos Fundos portal.
For anyone hunting for a home in the Alentejo, this does not mean keys any time soon. It is, though, the money that decides whether local housing strategies get built. Rents in these homes follow the public schemes, which work differently from the affordable-rent caps for private landlords.
Image: Torchondo from Sevilla, España / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)