"We're living and dying here": long-term Malé residents lose housing over paperwork

“Eligibility is a joke!” said Fathimath Shaina, a 30 year-old woman who has lived in the capital since primary school, but found herself removed from the “verified list” of successful applicants for the Gedhoruveriya housing scheme published last week.

Shaina was among hundreds of recipients of social housing flats chosen by the previous administration who were disqualified due to gaps in documentation to prove uninterrupted residency in Malé for more than 15 years.

“[We’re] living and dying in Malé while people pretend we don’t live here as migrants, while pouring all our [expletive] money into landlord pockets,” she told the Maldives Independent.

Her family is among more than 100,000 non-native residents from other islands forced to pay exorbitant rents in the Greater Malé Region. After decades of migration in search of employment, education and healthcare, 40 percent of the population is now crammed into the 2.2-square mile capital island.

“It’s much easier to give land to Malé citizens,” Shaina said, referring to Gedhoruveriya’s  companion Binveriya scheme devised by the former Maldivian Democratic Party government in a belated push to resolve the acute housing crisis.

Gedhoruveriya offered apartments in Hulhumalé to long-term residents of Malé. Binveriya promised to award 9,001 land plots from both Hulhumalé and new land to be reclaimed from the Gulhifalhu and Giraavaru lagoons near the capital to native residents of Malé.

The MDP government defended awarding free land exclusively to those born in Malé as necessary to ensure “breathing space” for many families who shared a single room or lived in slum-like conditions after the division of inherited land into smaller plots.

But critics called the exclusion of migrants to the capital unfair, discriminatory and unconstitutional. 

"We’ve all been living here since at least 2002. My eldest brother even longer, he’s been here for more than 40 years, more than double the required period," said Shaina.

"I think it’s harder also because we saw how easily people got land as Malé people. Even when that land does not yet exist, before it has even been reclaimed, they even got an agreement."

All her siblings, including her brother, a construction consultant, and her elder sister, a single working mother of two, were among more than 20,000 applicants for the 4,000 flats under construction in Hulhumalé.

All three were deemed eligible after the MDP government’s evaluation process. But none of them made the revised list when the current administration completed a re-evaluation process launched after assuming office in November 2023.

After more than a year of waiting, the rejection came as a crushing blow.

“The documents submitted to prove continued residency for 15 years in Malé do not complete the requirement of 15 years of continuous residency prior to this scheme’s cutoff date 15 October 2022.” 

This was the most common message that emerged on the online portal when many of the rejected applicants logged in to check the official justification. 

The Maldives Independent spoke to people who listed a myriad of reasons for rejection.

Many who previously met the eligibility criteria were disqualified due to stricter documentation requirements – letters issued by local councils were no longer accepted. Nor were documents issued by owners of houses in Malé, many of whom had vouched in writing for applicants who resided in their homes. Employment letters were accepted provided that it matched the government’s pension records. 

Ishan’s (not real name) employment letter was dismissed over a missing stamp, creating a gap of more than one year in his required residency period.

“It’s very frustrating, it made me very angry and sad, too. This happens in every government, I'm in the list and I'm disqualified because I'm not eligible,” he said. “I’ve been living here forever, I don't have any housing or land anywhere but when they award points, I get the lowest of points, I don’t know what is happening.”

Qualification required applicants to score at least 73 points and 76 points, respectively, for two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments. 

Ishan, now 45, has been living in Malé since he relocated more than 40 years ago.

“I moved here for nursery school. So I finished school, got married and have been living in Malé all this time. There are documents to show that I’ve lived here, that I worked in jobs here, that I went to school here,” he said.

For Abdulla (not real name), the problem was a letter issued by the Malé City Council vouching for long-term residency. Such letters were rejected because the council was deemed to lack the means for verification.

“The response I got was that you have not lived here for 15 years. But I even have a letter issued by the Malé City Council saying that I've been a resident of Malé for 22 years,” he said.

Abdulla called the disqualification a “serious infringement of our rights”.

The city council’s document should have been verified before rejecting his application, he said.

“If the government won’t accept that document, I don't think Malé City Council now has any legal authority. Malé City Council as well as ministries are state institutions funded from taxpayer funds to provide services to people,” he said.

Adhaan (not real name), a 37-year-old photographer, was born and raised in Malé. But his registered permanent residence is on his mother’s island. Adhaan was rejected over a gap in his employment. A letter from his mother-in-law to prove his residence at her house was dismissed.

Adhaan was among applicants chosen by the MDP government for the 4,000 flats under construction at the time. Ahead of the September 2023 election, the former administration fast-tracked the selection process and published a list of recipients, inviting rejected applicants to file complaints and allowing resubmission of missing documents. The final list was published two days before the current administration took office.

Shortly before the change of government in November 2023, the state-owned Fahi Dhiriulhun Corporation signed contracts with the recipients on the list finalised by the outgoing administration.

That contract was legally binding, Adhaan insisted. 

“I will go to court, if i have to go out to the streets to protest over this, I will do it. You cannot do this to Maldivian citizens every time. There needs to be a wider policy on housing under a Housing Act that needs to be followed. Housing should not be like a piece of dough that each administration shapes however the way they want,” he said.

Many people were disqualified because the verification system applied a different standard to determine uninterrupted residency, explained Midhuam Saud, who leads an NGO called Commonersmv that advocates for the rights of social housing recipients. 

The initial policy did not specify how continuity would be checked, he noted.

"We saw that the government at the time did not ask for documentary evidence that strictly shows the continuous residency, so even if the documents showed gaps in this 15-year period, it was still treated as eligible,” he said.

“But now with this verification process, the government is defining that ‘continuous’ residency by saying that documents must not show a gap of more than a year. That presents a lot of problems for a lot of people. For example, a young person who finishes school and does not have a job for more than a year finds it difficult to prove residency,” he said.

The rejected applicants have until a deadline of March 31 to submit complaints. The Gedhoruveriya portal now includes an option to submit complaints, but it does not allow submission of any new documents, providing only a message box with a 3,000-character limit to express grievances.

More than 1,000 complaints were submitted by Tuesday night, Ibrahim Nazeem, state minister for housing, told PSM.