Different addresses, same desperation: voices from Malé's housing divide

"To this day we are stuck in this vicious cycle: Work Hard, Pay Rent, and Die."

This decade-old slogan from a viral social media encapsulated the desperation felt by thousands of migrants who have spent decades in Malé but were excluded from the Binveriya land scheme. But native Malé residents have their own housing crisis – families of 20 crammed into two-bedroom homes, inherited plots divided into ever-smaller pieces, with nowhere else to go.

When the fraught Binveriya debate was reignited two weeks ago, Maldivian social media predictably erupted, and quickly devolved into the usual pattern: personal attacks, rage-baiting, and two camps split over a radioactive topic talking at and past each other.

It felt like a rerun of a drama destined to play out every few months, each time without resolution. 

The recurring discourse exposes a fault line that runs through Maldivian society: between those registered to "permanent addresses" in the capital and those who were forced to migrate, between competing notions of fairness and belonging. Despite frequent suggestions the labels "Malé meehaa" and "Raajjethere meehaa" are outdated and divisive, the debate represents an inescapable divide with ramifications for identity, voting rights, and representation.

In the following accounts, both migrants and Malé natives share what the housing crisis looks like from where they stand.

I moved to Malé for secondary school in 2003. I left my family and moved alone, staying with an aunt at first and then working as a gengulhey kujjaa [household servant] before moving to a boarding house. I have been paying rent now for more than half my life. 

I didn't pay attention to the recent debate on social media because honestly I am just fed up at this point, nothing seems to change. I have been feeling this way for a long time now. It’s an unfair game that I can’t win. I have felt that it’s unfair ever since I first moved to Malé and felt the discrimination I faced for being from an island. I try not to let it make me miserable, but sometimes you just can’t help it.

When it suits them, Malé people will say that being from the capital city has benefits and advantages in any country, but when it suits them to not acknowledge that privilege they’d say Malé is just like any other island or being born in Malé is less beneficial than from being from an island.

We, all of us built the Malé that we know today. I have personally helped pay off the housing loans of many male people. Over the years, I have helped pay off so many loans. How? By paying rent. Because [landowners] do not pay off loans by working, they do it from rental income.

We saw with Binveriya that the guidelines could be changed and tailored to benefit the Malé meehaa but for us it’s not easy. I cannot get land in my island either because I get less points because I don’t live there. Points are deducted because I am not married either. But I don’t want to get married without having a place of my own to live. That was [former president Abdulla] Yameen’s thing, right, housing units for newlyweds. But I don’t want to get married in the hopes that someone might give me housing.

This is why I don’t vote now either. I don’t have hope that things will change. 

I want to say that it's unfair. But they’ll say in any country being from the capital city has advantages. But I say that it’s not set in stone. It makes a difference if you have property or not. 

It is unfair. I have been paying tax while living in Malé. I know several people who got land, and they will invest in real estate, become landlords and they are set for life. The state has plain and simply given capital for a group of people for free. This is a robbery. I would say that whether i want to or not, my anger and hate will be directed at you unless this wrong is not made right. But I don’t think it will matter to them because they will get the material and worldly benefits from this.

They gave away the land that should have been used to give social housing for people. You can never justify that. These artificial islands were reclaimed from all our taxpayer funds. I think Hulhumale is a betrayal to raajjetherey people. This is prejudice against us.

I used to live in a house that my grandmother got. It was passed down from my grandmother to my mother, and divided among my mother's 12 children. I have three children. I lived with my children in a very small space. We weren't able to build the house. How could we build while living there? We lived in very difficult conditions.

I didn't really get anything from the Binveriya scheme. I would have been able to go somewhere else had I actually got it. I did apply. I got from the Giraavaru lagoon. I have no idea when I'll be able to go there. 

Three children, my wife and a maid live in my part [of the house]. Apart from myself, three of my siblings live in the rest of the house with their children.

A plot that our father got as well was divided among some of the children. From my mother's plot, four children and their grandchildren. And four children in my father's house – that's how it was divided.  

I now live in my father's part. Four families live in this house. From my part, one room was built up [to a two-storey structure]. It's not really an elevated house. It's still all on the ground floor is what I mean. 

My younger brother lives like I do in a place of the same size, elevated with a deck [to create an attic or second floor]. The other two rented out their space and went elsewhere. 

If I remember correctly, there was 2,000 square feet in my father's space for four children. 

I've been living here since I got married. Before that, all of us lived together in our mother's house. Then we lived elsewhere while we studied. Since I got married and moved to this house, I've been living here. My child is now 24 years old now. So it must have been about 30 years. 

When I received from [Giraavaru], I lost a lot of hope. I had hoped to receive it from a better area in a better way such that I would get it sooner. So we had high hopes and then we received from Giraavaru lagoon and lost all hope. I still don’t have any hope even now. I don't believe we will get to live there. 

It's okay if they build a place and give us. But even that, we don't know in detail what's going to happen. What I mean is, are they going to build a house, get everything ready and then give it to us?

And the scary part is that if we move somewhere else, the government gets what we give up. The other siblings don't get it. That's a very scaring thing. 

Most people do not believe they have actually got plots. I've spoken to a lot of people and they don't believe they've got anything. Because it was given from Gulhifalhu and those [reclaimed] places, they don't believe they've really got a plot of land. They don't believe they will get this during their lifetime, which might be why.

We don't really have hope of being able to move to a place after it is reclaimed, becomes solid ground, have roads built. It is unclear if our children's children can go there. There's no hope left really.

Now Malé can't be expanded anymore. We have to go somewhere else. For example, when the place we're living now gets divided further, it's only going to get smaller and smaller. So there's nothing left in Malé. We need to go somewhere else. 

Now my children are saying, 'don't give up that plot no matter what. Keep it. Don't give it up.'

But because I have got that plot, I cannot build my house. At the same time, the flat we were supposed to get through Customs [housing for employees] – because my wife works at Customs – has also been cancelled because I got this plot.

But I have not actually got it. It's sad how this is happening. Not having got a place but having got a place in name only, resulting in losing the [flat] that my wife would have got. My hope is to get a place in our lifetime. To have a way to live. 

My sister, who’s about 18 years older than me, was the first in our family to move to Malé. Ever since I can remember, my family would joke that she was the only student in her batch who got As in all subjects but still had to repeat her year in school. This wasn’t because of her grades. It was because our local school, Madhrasathul Ifthithaah, didn’t have higher grades established yet. She’d complete Grade 7, then repeat it because Grade 8 hadn’t been introduced. When Grade 8 opened, she’d repeat it again because Grade 9 didn’t exist yet.

After a few years of this, my parents finally decided enough was enough and sent her to Malé to continue her studies. That’s when she saw the vast difference in the quality of education, and she pushed for the rest of us to follow.

I started Grade 1 in Malé. For the first two and a half years, my sister and I lived in a family friend’s house. Later, when my parents and siblings joined us, we found a place of our own, still rented, of course, and began the long cycle of trying to make a home in a city that always felt slightly out of reach.

I was young when we moved, so I never knew exactly how bad it was. From ages six to 17, the entirety of my primary and secondary years, I could feel the anxiety and tension of my family. I felt an immense pressure to be exceptional in school (I never was, I was just slightly above average). 

Throughout my childhood, if you can call it that, I was repeatedly told how much the rent costs, how much it had increased from the last house we packed and moved from, how much bills were costing, how my parents and older siblings were sacrificing “for our future," how if we didn’t succeed or do well in schools they would be embarrassed to show their face to people back home. 

I realise as an adult that my parents were trying to make us understand the gravity of living paycheck to paycheck, but all I ever felt was like a burden. And this ultimately did affect my relationship with my parents and older siblings, because I spent most of my adulthood striving for hyperindependence and to never be a “burden” on anyone. 

I don’t think migrants like me talk about moving houses enough. We moved every two years or so, so I learned not to get attached to any place. Stability is essential to child development, and I don’t think there is any place on this earth I can truly call “home.” I haven’t been to our family home in Naifaru in decades, and I’m still renting in Malé city. There is truly no place I’ve lived for longer than three years.

Like many migrants, I’ve faced discrimination, rarely blatant, but always there. Maybe it was someone making fun of my island, or a teacher treating me differently without saying why. The feeling of being “other” was always in the background of my life.

When the Binveriya scheme was announced, that quiet sense of difference became something undeniable. It reminded me that, no matter how long I’ve lived here, I still don’t truly belong anywhere. I don’t feel like I’m from Naifaru anymore, but I’m not really from Malé either. It’s like living in between. A kind of purgatory of identity.

It also made me realise how little ‘Malé meehun’ often have to do to get ahead compared to the struggles we face. To be handed land, from the most expensive part of the country, simply because of an address on an ID card felt grossly unfair.

They know. They know everything there is to know about the struggles of a person migrating to Malé. They just want more for their family.

I used to live with my husband and two kids in one bedroom with one bathroom. Each floor of our house building had two rooms. One room for each sibling.

[When Binveriya was announced] I first thought I wouldn't get it. The government always announces but nothing happens. It's always been a dream of mine to live outside this house. I can't afford rent anywhere else. I applied with my two sisters because people said you'd get more points that way. I was very happy when I got it. It felt like there might be a way out of this life situation.

We really probably can't live there. Don't you think? How are the three of us going to build a house there? We have to take a loan as well to build it. It's also so far when we have to go to school and office work in Malé. We probably have to rent it out as a warehouse and use that money to rent a place.

For my children, I always hoped they don't have to live the way I did. It makes me sad how they still have to share. It makes me very sad. But what can you do?  

I have been a single mom for a long time. I have one son. I recently got remarried and my new husband moved in with us. The three of us now live in one bedroom, in my mother's house. 

[When I was selected for the Binveriya scheme I thought] Alhamdhulillah, my son can hopefully have some space to run around, play, his own room. We can finally have our own kitchen and our own bedroom – things I never had growing up. I’m almost 40, I still don’t have that opportunity. So I was very grateful.

I hope somehow we can build a home there on that land we got. I have gotten with my siblings, so if we find a way to build there, that would be very good. If the three of us and our husbands are able to take a loan, it would be good to build the place. I wish my son doesn’t have to think about these things growing up.

When we say 'a Malé person,' everyone thinks we’re tycoons who built a huge house and rented it out. Not going to deny. They exist. Be that as it may, you can’t ignore thousands of Malé people who don’t have that privilege. Government housing policies say you don’t qualify to apply for social housing because you have a house in Malé. That doesn’t matter if it’s 20 people having to live in a two-bedroom house. Yes, there’s a house. But many people don’t even get to live in their own homes. They are forced to live for rent. 

When we say that, you’d say, 'people who come from the islands live for rent as well.' I get it. That sucks. And it also sucks having to move to Malé to find basic facilities. I’m sorry you have to do that. I wish the government didn’t develop our country in such a centralised way.

But I remember during Covid many people moved to their islands because they couldn’t afford to live in Malé. We didn’t have that option. This is our only island. There’s nowhere we can go if we can’t afford it. 

But even then, when land is reclaimed near here, you’re saying that’s reclaimed with all of our money, everyone should be given land. All this time, when islands were reclaimed and expanded, we were happy for the people of those islands. That was also reclaimed with all of our money. But I have never heard anyone say, 'don’t do that, or don’t give them land, we deserve that land.' 

Then you’d say, those aren’t equal places, there’s a thousandfold difference in the price of land. Okay, in that case, why don’t you give us land from a cheaper island? No, that can’t be done either. Island councils say, 'you can’t get land from this island, you aren’t from this island.' So when the government developed our island more, that doesn’t benefit all of us the way you think. The only place we have to live has become congested and we’re left with nowhere to live. When they decided to give a bit of land after eons, how can you scream and say, 'don’t give land?' How can you say that?

Most of my elder siblings moved to Malé in early 1990s for studies since education was only available up to 7th grade in our island. They stayed in different houses in Malé, doing domestic chores while studying. Both of my brothers quit schooling before 10th grade.

My father was a seaman and already based in Malé, and my mother moved to Malé with my little sister in early 1995 mainly to get treatment for chronic health issues. One of my sisters and I would be the last out of the eight children to be moved to Malé for studies.

In the coming decade we would move to six different houses in Malé as tenants, spending nearly all of our income to pay rent. My parents would do back breaking work (quite literally since my father suffered from temporary paralysis due to a spinal injury at work) to provide for us.

They would try their best to ensure we had a good education though my sister and I went to a fee paying [ward] school (back then if you migrate to Malé, you can only go to public school if you join grade one or eight). Only one of my six elder siblings would be able to complete high school.

At school, I would be among the few students who lived with parents. Almost all my classmates were living in different houses in Malé, and would often fall asleep in class after a tiring night of cleaning, baby sitting, and cooking. Stories of child abuse were not uncommon.

My mom would make hedhika [short eats] while looking after eight children to support my father who was paid a bare minimum wage for his labour. They would struggle to pay our school fees, exam fees and ensuring our safety in a city that was increasingly getting more congested and unsafe.

My sister and I would get scholarships to study abroad – a rare privilege back then for students who went to avashu [ward] schools. I would become the first out of eight siblings to complete my degree although I am the second youngest.

To this day we are stuck in this vicious cycle of ‘Work Hard’ ‘Pay Rent’ & ‘Die’. Despite all of us working for nearly all of our adult life, we do not have any savings. Despite having lived all of our life in Malé, we can’t vote here or afford to have a house here.

After 20 years since we left our island, my mother’s house where we grew up was in complete ruins, stopping us from the possibility of moving back. My parents are nearly 70 and my father’s plot of land still remains, with no hopes of being able to build a home in his lifetime.

Mid-last year with the support of well-wishing family members we have started to renovate our island home as my parents really want to move back to our island, now that the last of their children, my little sister, will be completing her degree this year.The stress of living in Malé with all the congestion and pollution is exacerbated by the fact that we have to constantly worry about finding a place we can afford to live. Work becomes meaningless when paycheck after paycheck after paycheck has to be transferred to the landlord.

Moving back to the island has been our wish for as long as we have been forced to migrate here. Constantly nostalgic for our childhood days in our beautiful island home with a yard full of hibiscus, pomegranate, java apple, stone apple, and countless number of banana and palm trees.

And yet for most of my siblings moving back is not an easy option especially since they have children who have no sense of belonging to our island, have to think about providing the best education for them and finding work in the island worries them.

Two decades since we left to Malé for education and health care, yet in many ways these issues remain the same in our island. Sure now you can study up to 10th grade but every year parents send their children to Malé for A levels. Unreliable, low quality healthcare is the norm.It will take 24 years since my family moved to Malé for our island to get a sewerage system. A sewerage system! yayy. We are supposed to feel grateful for this ‘development’ with our politicians bewildered if we do not constantly praise and bow them.

This year, and the next year and the next decade more and more families like mine would be forced to move to Malé since every single government we have had promotes centralisation. PR like ‘Jazeera Raajje’ is meaningless when action shows you prioritise profit over people.

Every time someone talks about providing services in islands or highlight systematic discrimination faced by migrants, someone will say it’s not “feasible” to develop islands. Meaning it’s not profitable to their pockets to provide essential services to other islands.

Every single government has championed commodification of essential services such as housing, healthcare, and education. They all believe in neoliberal trickle down economics. Enriching themselves first and giving away peanuts to the rest of us, on their own terms.

They don’t see any irony when they claim to simultaneously work to reduce inequality while promoting privatisation of essential services. How does one promote equality while developing luxury housing, private schools and hospitals for the wealthy?

The issues we face cannot be solved by their trickle down mentality or their philanthropy or their CSR projects. We need an economic system that is democratically works for all of us, and not just a few tycoons: the root cause of all of these issues.

We cannot unlink centralisation from capitalism. The reason why our tax money is being invested in Greater Malé is to ensure capitalists can maximise their profit. Centralisation is a way to secure their capital by investing in infrastructure that expands their businesses.

Despite many of us living in slum-conditions, luxury housing projects are promoted by our politicians who believe in “market solutions”. They know real-estate is big money.

They know centralisation is key for this. Empty flats for the rich while the rest of us are stuck in cages.It is no longer ‘feasible’ for us to just let them rule and enrich themselves while we are stuck doing miserable work only to pay rent and die. We need to change the way politics is practiced in this country. We need to set the agenda and it will be on our own terms