Villas no-go areas for singles

How sad that Dubai hasn't come further than this, with unsophisticated catch-all blanket laws, simplistic in the extreme.

Today's Gulf News leads with the story that Dubai Municipality is taking stringent measures to ensure that single people, bizarrely known as 'bachelors' regardless of their gender or marital status, are evicted from villas.

They are threatening to cancel the trade licences of any real estate company found to be renting villas to 'bachelors'. Similar action is also threatened for companies who lodge 'executive bachelors' in villas.

The Head of the Building Inspections Section at Dubai Municipality defined 'bachelors' as "a single person whether married or unmarried, male or female."

Dear oh dear.

Neighbours causing a nuisance - yes, I agree they should be moved out. Whether they're 'bachelors' or married couples, it makes no difference if they're causing a problem.

Neighbours not causing a problem? Why on earth should they be found guilty simply because of their marital status and evicted from their home?

They, the singles, are free to live in any apartment in Dubai apparently, but under no circumstances can they live in a villa. Unless, again bizarrely, the villa is in a 'private development' - I'll come back to that later.

So four office girls decide to share the cost of a villa in Satwa, a room each, a nice little garden, nice location. Respectable and well behaved, the perfect neighbours.

Evict them. And cancel the real estate agency's licence.

The same villa overcrowded with eight families living in it, packed into every room and hallway.

They can stay, they're married.

The wife of a fifty year old chief executive leaves him and goes back home. He wants to stay on in the company-supplied villa he's lived in for the last ten years.

Evict him. And cancel his company's licence.

A rowdy family live in a villa, have badly behaved teenage children and are a nuisance to their neighbours.

They can stay, they're married.

But in apartment blocks where people are living in much closer proximity to each other it's all OK: "there are no restrictions on bachelors staying in flats anywhere in Dubai."

It's unsophisticated nonsense.

If residents are causing a problem, are a nuisance to their neighbours, they should be dealt with. If there's overcrowding, and that's a real problem in certain areas of the city, it should be dealt with. But that has nothing to do with the marital status of the people.

Private fiefdoms

I've always found it strange that the developments in 'New Dubai' are nothing to do with the Municipality. The developers set their own rules, which may well be different from Municipality rules. Private developers setting rules and regulations that are properly the responsibility of government? Very odd.



The Gulf News story is here.