No more sharing villas in Dubai - Abu Dhabi clamps down on roof top shanties - trouble in Paradise?

The housing situation in Dubai and neighboring emirates is in for a nasty surprise. Following the recent introduction of new laws aimed at curbing speculation in the Dubai property market and preventing immigrant workers from being taken advantage of by dubious landlords, Dubai Municipality announced a 30-day deadline from Sunday for residents sharing villas to vacate them, giving the thousands of tenants a rude shock.
Omar bin Abdul Rahman, Head of the Building Inspection Section at the Dubai Municipality, said on Sunday that landlords must ensure that only one family lives in their villas. If they failed to comply with the new rules within the deadline, the municipality would slap fines up to Dh50,000 on them, the official said. The civic body had already said it would not take the responsibility of making the landlords refund the rents collected in advance. The deadline announced on Sunday is all set to land many tenants in deep trouble. “There cannot be any bachelors, labourers or more than one family in the villas. Though the campaign in this connection has been on for quite a while, the landlords will now have to ensure that regulations are complied within a month, that is 30 days,” Abdul Rahman said.

“They (the landlords) need to evict the families and others sharing villas, failing which they will face heavy penalties. If a villa still houses more than one family, bachelor or labourer after one month, the landlord would face fines up to Dh50,000, in addition to the disconnection of water and electricity supplies,” Abdul Rahman told Khaleej Times.

Calling this as the “final step” of the ongoing campaign for “protecting the residential environment” of the emirate, the official said the drive would focus only on the villas for now. The cases of flats would be taken up later.

“The landlords also need to ensure that their villas are free from any kind of illegal partitioning. Partitioning of rooms raises several health concerns. We want to ensure that people live in a healthy and hygienic environment,” the official added.

Last year, the civic body had asked all bachelors and labourers to move out of the villas. This year, it started a campaign to evict the families sharing villas. “People are expected to cooperate by reporting any accommodation violating the norms by calling toll-free 800900 or on the municipality’s web site, www.dm.gov.ae, he said.

The deadline announced by the municipality has shocked both landlords and tenants. While landlords said that they needed time to evict tenants, the latter requested the civic body to extend the deadline.

“The deadline is a sort of a death blow for us. Finding cheap accommodation in Dubai is impossible. With this, the landlords will now ask us to vacate immediately. I don’t know what to do. The last option for me is to send my family back home and shift to a bed space. The municipality must extend the deadline,” said Zakhir Razzaq, who lives in a shared villa in Al Qusais.

Our thinking is that this will just put more pressure on already beleaguered workers in the emirate, and wonder why there is still no minimum wage. At the same time, Abu Dhabi is facing similar issues and has decided to clamp down on illegal roof-top shanties. Yet another fatal fire has prompted the clampdown. A recent fire in Dubai killed eleven people.

The official press release states:

Lieutenant General Shaikh Saif Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Interior, on Thursday ordered Abu Dhabi Police to carry out aerial inspections to clamp down on illegal shelters on top of buildings here. The decision comes close on the heels of a fire on Tuesday afternoon, which erupted from a wooden shack built on the roof of a 16-storey building on Airport Road. The Air Wing will conduct inspections and provide photographs for the monitoring authorities to take stringent action, including pulling down the structure with immediate effect. More than 65 people, including 14 firefighters, were injured in Tuesday’s blaze in which two apartments were completely gutted, apart from the wooden shack. Brigadier Umair Mohammad Al Muhairi, Director of Police, said such illegal dwellings were not only a risk to the people, but also affected the image of the city. During the fire, the emergency and rescue teams could not access those living on the roof, Al Muhairi said, adding that flammable materials used to build the shelter further worsened the situation. Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Al Nuaimi, head of the Quick Intervention Team, said: “It was a small fire, but the hurdles ahead of us were huge.”

Both of these measure fail to deal with the real issue. Underpaid immigrant workers need living accomodation also, yet the overwhelming majority of the developments in Dubai are high end developments and ouside the financial reach of these workers. There seems no end in sight to the amount of development, and these workers can no longer be considered short term.