Foreigners face bar on sharing homes in Dubai

DUBAI: Expatriates who share homes in the booming emirate of Dubai to split soaring rental costs face eviction amid a crackdown by the municipality which deems the practice of house-sharing a health hazard. To enforce its decision, the municipality of

Dubai, one of the seven components of the United Arab Emirates, has  begun to hand out fines and to cut water and power supplies  to villas.

“More severe measures will be taken,” Omar Abdel Rahman, housing chief inspector at the Dubai Municipality, said. “Those violating the law have been given a deadline and we have started cutting water and electricity supplies and slapping fines” on those sharing houses, he said.

The official denied any link with analysts’ predictions of a tailing off in demand for
property in Dubai because of a scarcity of loans as a  consequence of the global credit crunch. “That is nothing  to do with it,” Abdel Rahman insisted.

Tenants will face fines of up to $13,600 and owners of shared villas can be charged twice as much if they ignore the municiality’s view that house-sharing is a “security and health hazard,” he added. Local newspapers believe the ban could extend to flat-sharing as well. So far it is not known how many people face eviction as part of the crackdown which was launched earlier this year, but it is clear that expatriates  are nervous.

Iqbal Nair of India, his wife and the couple’s two children are all crammed in one room in an old house which they share with other tenants in the popular neighbourhood of Satwa. They pay 500 dollars monthly for their modest lodgings.

“If the municipality imposes its decision I will not think twice: I will have to send back to India my wife and my two children,” he said. In fact, Nair will have to move out sooner or later because the Satwa neighbourhood is due to be razed down to the ground to give way to a mega development project  projected to cost nearly 100  billion dollars.

Critics of the crackdown say the authorities want to transform the emirate into a city-state for the rich only.

Foreigners represent more than 80% of the population of Dubai, which is estimated to comprise 1.5 million inhabitants despite a spiralling cost of living and steep rental prices.

In Dubai, the average annual rent for a one bedroom apartment is around $27,000.
Rent hikes were capped to a maximum of 15 percent in  November 2005 and again last year by Dubai in an attempt to put a lid on soaring prices seen as threatening its competitiveness in attracting foreign  businesses.

British real-estate agent Jonathan Darcos said the crackdown has somewhat stimulated demand for apartment rentals in Dubai.