Wanted: 'Bed space'

DUBAI - Standing outside the wooden gates of her dusty neglected villa compound in the heart of Satwa, one of the older areas of Dubai, Aileen never imagined her living quarters would be this bleak when she moved to the city.

The walls are cracked, paint faded and chipped, and the top hinge has broken off the right gate, leaving it bent over in the doorway.

The compound sits on a quiet street lined with villas, each as dilapidated as the next. Behind it the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building, glistens in the sun.

“I had no idea it was going to be like this when I came to Dubai,” Aileen, a 23-year-old Filipina who works as a personal assistant for a free zone company, says of her living conditions.

In the courtyard a battered and torn couch lays against the side of the villa, its cushions missing, with an incomplete set of plastic garden furniture next to it.

A spider’s web of washing line weighed down with wet clothes spans the courtyard above a patchwork of broken paving stones, weeds, sand and cigarette butts - the first signs of life.

Inside the villa a long dimly-lit corridor with rooms on either side leads down to a flight of stairs. The corridor is scattered with clothes horses, cardboard boxes and the odd empty 5 gallon water bottle.

The first of five or so rooms is crammed from floor to ceiling with beds, cupboards, tables, clothes, blankets, laptops, pictures, posters ... and people.

The sight is overwhelming. It is like a Picasso painting that you need to step back from to really take it all in.

80 TO A VILLA

If you ever wondered how the other half live, well this is it. In the glittering city-state that has built up a reputation as a playground for the rich and famous life is hard for many.

“Of course at first it is difficult, but you get used to it,” Aileen says.

Aileen rooms with a girlfriend in a small building adjacent to the villa. She is one of the lucky few. There are nine people living in the room next door and 11 in just one of the rooms in the villa itself.

“I don’t have any idea how many people are living in the villa ... maybe around 80,” she says.

Thousands of Asian migrant workers flock to Dubai every year in search of employment, but few are prepared for the struggle they face in city where they are not the intended clientele.

In all the literature about the man-made islands, five-star hotels, designer stores and expensive cars, there is little about the low pay, high cost of living and poor quality of life that awaits them.

“The accommodation here is so expensive,” Aileen says. “In the Philippines the accommodation is cheaper. With the money I am paying for one room in Dubai I can rent a big six-bedroom house back home.”

BED SHEET PRIVACY

Across the other side of Dubai in Deira, the city’s oldest district, Joy lives in a cramped room in a three bedroom apartment with eight other women.

The 41-year-old Filipina sleeps on the bottom of a bunk bed, one of four in the room, her only privacy a bed sheet that hangs down across her bunk.

“I didn’t know I would have to share a room with so many people when I first came to Dubai. I thought it would be two or three in the room, but not six or eight,” says Joy, a mother-of-three who works as a shop assistant in one of the city’s many malls.

Joy pays 500 dirhams ($136) a month for her bunk, known locally as “bed space”. For 1,000 dirhams a month she would only be sharing a room with two or three people.

A studio apartment in one of the more affordable areas of Dubai costs around 3,000 dirhams a month to rent.

Rents have come down drastically in the wake of the city’s real estate market collapse, but they are still out of reach for people like Aileen and Joy, who send around half of their salaries home to their families.

THE FILIPINO WAY

Shop assistants make around 1,000-3,000 dirhams a month, while personal assistants and other office workers make around 3,000-6,000 dirhams. The average annual per capita income in the Philippines is about 6,000 dirhams.

“I send a lot of money back home to my family to help my parents, sisters and brothers, that’s the Filipino way,” says Aileen.

Similar stories to those of Aileen and Joy can be heard in villas and apartments across the city, with a significant proportion of the population made up of low-wage earners.

Dubai Municipality has identified more than 5,000 villas occupied by members of more than one family, an indication of how prevalent shared accommodation is.

The villa audit is part of a drive to clamp down on overcrowding. However, clearing the villas will likely be much easier than finding somewhere else to house the thousands of low-wage earner who form the backbone of the economy, and for whom "bed space" is - presently - the only option.