Soon the village of Albinen will vote on a new system to encourage settlers
As Swissinfo.ch notes, Albinen – a picturesque village at an altitude of 1300 meters above sea level with a view of the Rhone valley, resembles a living postcard scene. However, there are fewer and fewer residents, many houses stand empty or have already been converted into hotels. The local mayor Beat Jost told the Swiss news agency SDA about this. According to him, not long ago they even had to close the secondary school, all because there were simply not enough students for a normal educational process.
Recently, two families with children moved down to the valley, and only five schoolchildren remained in the village of Albinen. Now they have to take a bus to the town of Leuk every day, and the journey takes a full 20 minutes. Beat Jost regrets that things turned out this way, because, in his words, the village has great development potential. The local nature is uniquely picturesque, the air is clean, the number of sunny days per year exceeds the Swiss average, and the famous thermal resort of Leukerbad with its unique hot springs is only 6 kilometers away.
Not far from the village are also major cantonal cities, including Sion, the capital of the canton of Valais, and the industrial center Visp. There is no shortage of land plots suitable for development. And yet, all these beauties and advantages, as it turns out, are now completely insufficient to attract people here. So how to break out of this vicious circle?
And then a "brilliant" idea was born: let's just pay money to anyone who agrees to "choose our village as their place of residence." An initiative committee was immediately organized. It formulated a corresponding legislative initiative and easily collected 94 signatures under it, almost half of the total number of local residents. The initiative was registered with the mayor's office and put to a vote, which will take place on November 30, 2017.
The text of the initiative proposes introducing specific financial incentives for those who decide to move to the village, renovate a house here, or build a new one. For each adult, a payment of 25,000 francs is provided, for each child – 10,000 francs. But there are conditions: only persons under 40 years of age can receive the payments, and they will be obliged to move to the village for a minimum of 10 years. The money will be allocated from the budget of a special fund formed from municipal revenues.
However, competitors are not asleep. In the Valais village of Bourg-Saint-Pierre, the head of the municipality told journalists in the summer of 2017 that anyone wishing to settle there and, for example, build a new house or renovate an old one, will receive support in the amount of 10% of the project cost, but not more than 30,000 francs. No age restrictions are provided here, but newcomers will be obliged to live in the village for at least 20 years.
Another Valais settlement – Inden – provides all its residents with significant discounts when making purchases at the local village store. And the citizens of the village of Mont-Noble (canton of Valais) can now purchase land plots prepared for development at reduced prices (instead of 120 francs per square meter, they will pay 100 francs).
This measure proved to be quite effective, and the number of village residents began to slowly grow – from 867 people in 2011 to 1064 in 2017. And recently, the Swiss village of Gondo (canton of Valais) implemented a similar project, which managed to attract an entire computing center by providing it with cheap electricity and the opportunity to place server equipment in the cool bunkers of an old decommissioned civil defense complex.
The Italian-speaking canton of Ticino also suffers from population outflow. Hoping to stop this process, a deputy of the cantonal parliament recently proposed granting substantial tax breaks to those who agree to settle in peripheral areas of the canton. However, the cantonal government rejected this proposal, considering that such a measure would contradict the principle that all citizens are equal before the law, including tax legislation.
By the way, let us clarify right away that buying real estate in the village of Albinen will not grant the right to stay in Switzerland – this project is intended only for persons already living in this country.