Rapid Assessment of the Housing in Maldives

Despite considerable economic and social progress during the past several decades, housing in Maldives continues to face severe challenges in ensuring that all Maldivians are able to enjoy their rights to adequate housing.

This report seeks to provide an overview of the scale of the country’s housing problems, why these have emerged, and most importantly, the possible steps required to overcome the challenges of housing in Maldives in a concrete, rights-based manner.

Following a brief introduction, the report on housing in Maldives contains three main sections.

The first examines the right to adequate housing in Maldives and outlines the precise obligations held by the State to respect, protect, and fulfill this right; in conjunction with the various entitlements of individuals that together comprise the right to adequate housing.

The next section  explores the types and sources of housing stress within the country and examines in this regard

• The situation in Malé
• Causes and patterns of urban migration
• Housing stress in the atolls
• Housing finance
• Housing affordability and rental market
• Programs and plans to address housing rights, and legal and policy issues.

The report then concludes with a series of recommendations for housing in Maldives, which together are designed to kick-start a broader process leading to continuously improving housing conditions in the country.

The 2007 Annual Report of the Human Rights Commission of the Maldives (HRCM) revealed that the third highest number of complaints concerning economic, social, and cultural (ESC) rights received by the HRCM was related to housing matters.

The second highest number of complaints concerning ESC rights was in relation to the 2004 Tsunami incidences, of which housing was the main concern.

With a view to developing a deeper understanding of the origins of housing in Maldives situation and to determine how – within a human rights framework.

These issues can best be addressed, the HRCM decided to carry out a rapid assessment of the housing situation in Maldives as an initial concrete step.

To anyone who resides in or who is even vaguely familiar with the socioeconomic situation in the Maldives, housing is almost universally seen as one of the most pressing problems both in the capital and in the atolls.

The continuing concentration of the population in Malé, the ongoing decline in land availability, and threats of land loss due to climate change.

The ongoing reluctance to fully embrace the idea of safe islands, and problems associated with achieving population growth in Hulhumalé.

Increases in land values, ever-increasing rents and housing unaffordability, severe overcrowding, the growing difficulties in allocating land to young families, increasing shortage of clean water and effective sanitation systems, and other housing-related challenges are at the core of the housing-related issues that dominate the social framework of the country, and which are widely known by the population as a whole.

These and related problems affect a large section of the population, including low- and middle-income Maldivians and migrant workers, and often result in very serious spin-off social problems which, in many respects, have as their origin problems within the housing sector.

When we place the entire question of housing within the larger context of climate change and the likely repercussions that rising sea levels will have, and already are having on the country.

Then it is clear that grappling successfully with the national housing crisis deserves renewed attention and commitment by all relevant actors.

The time over which the impact of housing problems in Maldives is felt and multiple social problems caused by extended exposure to them suggests that the efforts to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to adequate housing has fallen well behind the rate of economic growth the country has experienced over the past quarter century.

As noted, the HRCM has received a large number of housing complaints. In most cases, a housing complaint will reflect a problem affecting a household of several or more persons, rather than only a single individual.

Also read: Maldives Development Update