Bachelors also need a place to live

Dubai: One thing many people who live in Dubai agree on is that finding a good place to live at a reasonable price can be difficult.

Rents seem to be climbing upwards fast.

In recent weeks, securing suitable accommodation has become particularly difficult for one group of people: bachelors.

As reported in Gulf News, some landlords in both Dubai and Sharjah have decided not to renew tenancy agreements on flats being used by bachelors.

Officials say they have received complaints from families about disturbance caused by the unmarried.

And they insist it is not right that 20 bachelors should be packed into a two or three-bedroom flat.

Is ejecting bachelors a sensible measure to safeguard family life, or do blanket bans on single people unfairly tar all bachelors with the same brush? In a recent Gulf News poll, 87 per cent of respondents said bachelors were being "unfairly victimised" by landlords, while nine per cent said they were not and four per cent were unsure.

Gulf News spoke to a variety of Dubai residents some of them bachelors, others family people to find out what they thought.

Syrian American architect Samer Kallas, a 45-year-old bachelor, said it was "not fair" to get rid of the unmarried.

"Maybe you can differentiate between people on the basis of their age, because younger people are more noisy than the elderly, but not on the basis of their marital status," he said.

Indian therapist Asha Samtani, 56, was also against kicking out bachelors, saying there should not be "such strict rules" that ban them from certain accommodation blocks.

She said she understood the concerns of those who felt that bachelors could be disruptive or engage in immoral behaviour.

However, she said if individual flats that contained bachelors were not causing a problem it was not right to ask them to leave.

"There are exceptions to every rule. If the landlords feel the bachelors are reasonable people, they should be allowed to stay," she said.

Irish quantity surveyor Terry Hand, 62, said it was "unfair and extreme" to remove all the bachelors.

"It may be that some bachelors deserve to be evicted, but it should be done on a case-by-case basis," he said.

Georgina Porter, 34, a British housewife, said she had read the reports about the moves to eject the bachelors and thought what was happening was "terrible".

"They treat bachelors really unfairly. Most of them are just trying to earn money and send some back to their families some of them have families of their own back home and it is very hard for them to afford the rents in Dubai.

"Most of them are labourers and security people at hotels and I think they should be left alone," she said.

Simon Brind, 38, a British general manager at an insurance company, said he lived next door to a villa with four bachelors and had no problem with them.

"Everybody has got the right to live where they want to. I am a family man with one daughter but I think the bachelors next door are fun. We mix with them and it's quite nice," he said.

Indian accountant Anjali Sagar, 30, said: "It's not fair [to eject bachelors] because if people are respectful and they know limits it is not necessary.

"I don't find it a problem living near bachelors. There are some near me but they are hardly ever home at all."

Indian driver Anil Bahtwadi said it was "not good" to eject bachelors from their accommodation. "Anyone should be allowed to live there. It is difficult to be a bachelor here. In Jumeirah for example it is very hard to find accommodation as a bachelor," said the 45-year-old, who has a family back in India.

However, there were several people who took the opposite view and said it was sensible to have family-only accommodation.

Hashim Khalel, a 28-year-old Indian sales manager, said "families should be separate from bachelors". "I think it's not good having them together. It's safer having families in their own," he said.

Rui Sequeira, 44, from India, who is married with a family and works as a manager with a company, took a similar view.

"I used to live in Saudi Arabia and there it was a complete no no having bachelors living close to families, but here it seems to be more acceptable.

"However I don't think bachelors always realise they have to look after the building and ensure it is a peaceful place in which to live.

"Sometimes kids have exams and need peace and quiet, and bachelors might not be sensitive to these issues. Also, bachelors tend to crowd parking spaces and this puts a strain on the other tenants which is not fair," he said.

Also against mixing bachelors with families was Lope Martinez, a 38-year-old from the Philippines.

"You can understand why they don't want bachelors living near people with families. They have different lifestyles that will conflict with each other and make life difficult.

"It is much better for bachelors to be in accommodation blocks with other bachelors because that way they cannot disturb other people," he said.