As Dubai cracks down on crowded, illegal apartments, migrant workers have nowhere else to go

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Lights flicker, doors hang off their hinges and holes in the walls expose pipes in the apartment building where Hesham, an Egyptian migrant worker, lives in Dubai, an emirate better known for its flashy skyscrapers and penthouses.

His two-bedroom rental unit is carved up to house nine other men, and what he calls home is a modified closet just big enough for a mattress.

But now the government has ordered the 44-year-old salesman out of even that cramped space, which costs him $270 a month. He's one of the many low-paid foreign laborers caught up in a widespread crackdown by authorities in Dubai over illegal subletting.

That includes rooms lined with bunk beds that offer no privacy but are as cheap as a few dollars a night, as well as partitioned apartments like Hesham's, where plywood boards, drywall and plastic shower curtains can turn a flat into a makeshift dormitory for 10 or 20 people.

After a blaze at a high-rise in June, Dubai officials launched the campaign over concerns that partitioned apartments represent a major fire risk. Some of those evicted have been left scrambling to stay off the streets, where begging is illegal. Others fear they could be next, uncertain when or where inspectors might show up.

“Now we don’t know what we’ll do,” said Hesham, who's staying put until his landlord evicts him. Like others living in Dubai's cheapest and most crowded spaces, he spoke to The Associated Press on condition only his first name be used for fear of coming into the crosshairs of authorities enforcing the ban on illegal housing.

“We don’t have any other choice," he said.

Dubai Municipality, which oversees the city-state, declined an AP request for an interview. In a statement, it said authorities have conducted inspections across the emirate to curb fire and safety hazards — an effort it said would “ensure the highest standards of public safety” and lead to “enhanced quality of life” for tenants. It didn't address where those unable to afford legal housing would live in a city-state that’s synonymous with luxury yet outlaws labor unions and guarantees no minimum wage.

Dubai has seen a boom since the pandemic that shows no signs of stopping. Its population of 3.9 million is projected to grow to 5.8 million by 2040 as more people move into the commercial hub from abroad.

Much of Dubai’s real estate market caters to wealthy foreign professionals living there long-term. That leaves few affordable options for the majority of workers — migrants on temporary, low-wage contracts, often earning just several hundred dollars a month. Nearly a fifth of homes in Dubai were worth more than $1 million as of last year, property firm Knight Frank said. Developers are racing to build more high-end housing.

That continued growth has meant rising rents across the board. Short-term rentals are expected to cost 18% more by the end of this year compared to 2024, according to online rental company Colife. Most migrant workers the AP spoke to said they make just $300 to $550 a month.

In lower-income areas, they said, a partitioned apartment space generally rents for $220 to $270 a month, while a single bunk in an undivided room costs half as much. Both can cost less if shared, or more depending on size and location. At any rate, they are far cheaper than the average one-bedroom rental, which real estate firm Engel & Völkers said runs about $1,400 a month.

The United Arab Emirates, like other Gulf Arab nations, relies on low-paid workers from Africa and Asia to build, clean, babysit and drive taxi cabs. Only Emirati nationals, who are outnumbered nearly 9 to 1 by residents from foreign countries, are eligible for an array of government benefits, including financial assistance for housing.

Large employers, from construction firms and factories to hotels and resorts, are required by law to house workers if they are paid less than $400 a month, much of which they send home to families overseas.

However, many migrants are employed informally, making their living arrangements hard to regulate, said Steffen Hertog, an expert on Gulf labor markets at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The crackdown will push up their housing costs, creating “a lot of stress for people whose life situation is already precarious,” he said.

Hassan, a 24-year-old security guard from Uganda, shares a bed in a partitioned apartment with a friend. So far, the government hasn’t discovered it, but he has reason to be nervous, he said.

“They can tell you to leave without an option, without anywhere to go.”

Dubai has targeted overcrowded apartments in the past amid a spate of high-rise fires fueled by flammable siding material. The latest round of inspections came after a blaze in June at a 67-story tower in the Dubai Marina neighborhood, where some apartments had been partitioned.

More than 3,800 residents were forced to evacuate from the building, which had 532 occupied apartments, according to a police report. That means seven people on average lived in each of these units in the tower of one-, two- and three-bedroom flats. Dozens of homes were left uninhabitable.

There were no major injuries in that fire. However, another in 2023 in Dubai’s historic Deira neighborhood killed at least 16 people and injured another nine in a unit believed to have been partitioned.

Ebony, a 28-year-old odd-job worker from Ghana, was recently forced to leave a partitioned apartment after the authorities found out about it. She lived in a narrow space with a roommate who slept above her on a jerry-built plywood loft bed.

“Sometimes to even stand up,” she said, “your head is going to hit the plywood.”

She’s in a new apartment now, a single room that holds 14 others — and sometimes more than 20 as people come and go, sharing beds. With her income of about $400 a month, she said she didn’t have another option, and she’s afraid of being forced out again.

“I don’t know what they want us to do. Maybe they don’t want the majority of people that are here in Dubai,” Ebony said.

The wall of a building is plastered with advertisements for inexpensive, partitioned housing in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Friday, July 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

Clothes dry on balconies of a residential building in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Friday, July 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

People walk past a concrete bench plastered with advertisements for inexpensive, partitioned housing in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Friday, July 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

A migrant worker hands out beauty salon pamphlets to passersby at a marketplace in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Friday, July 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

A modified closet where a migrant worker lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is seen on Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Gabe Levin)

Clothes dry on balconies of a residential building in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Friday, July 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

NEW YORK (AP) — Ten years ago, Kim Gordon — a revolutionary force in the alternative rock band Sonic Youth, the ’80s New York no wave scene and the space between art and noise — debuted solo music. At the time, she was already decades into a celebrated, mixed-medium creative career.

The midtempo “Murdered Out” was her first single, where clangorous, overdubbed guitars met the unmistakable rasp of her deadpan intonations. It was a surprise from an experimentalist well-versed in the unexpected: The song took inspiration from Los Angeles car culture, and its main collaborator was the producer Justin Raisen, then best known for his pop work with Sky Ferreira and Charli XCX. Their partnership has continued in the decade since, and on March 13, Gordon will drop her third solo album, “Play Me,” announced Wednesday alongside the release of a hazy, transcendent single, “Not Today.”

“It was a happy accident,” she says of her continued work with Raisen. “In the beginning, I was somewhat skeptical of working with a producer and collaborator, really. But it’s turned out to be incredibly freeing.”

“Play Me” follows Gordon's critically lauded, beat-heavy 2024 album “The Collective,” a noisy body of work that featured oddball trap blasts. It earned her two Grammy nominations — a career first — for alternative music album and alternative music performance. Those were for the song “Bye Bye,” with its eerie, dissonant beat originally written for rapper Playboi Carti. For “Play Me,” Gordon reimagined the track for the closer, “Bye Bye 25!” She says it was the result of her thinking about the rap world, where revisiting and remixing is commonplace.

“I came up with the idea of using these words that Trump had sort of ‘banned’ in his mind,” she says of the new song's lyrics. (An example: “Injustice / Opportunity / Dietary guidelines / Housing for the future.” President Donald Trump’s administration associates the terms with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which it has vowed to root out across the government.) For Gordon, because it became “more conceptual … the remake doesn’t seem as anxiety-provoking as the original.”

There is a connective spirit between “The Collective” and “Play Me” — a shared confrontation, propulsive production and songs that possess a keen ability to process and reflect the world around Gordon. “It does feel kind of like an evolution,” she says of this album next to her last. “It’s sort of a more focused record, and immediate.” The songs are shorter and attentive.

Or, to put it more simply: “I like beats and that inspires me more than melodies,” she says. “Beats and space.”

That palette drives “Play Me,” a foundation in which staccato lyricism transforms and offers astute criticism. Consider the title track, which challenges passive listening and the devaluation of music in the age of streaming. She names Spotify playlist titles, imagined genres defined by mood rather than music. “Rich popular girl / Villain mode” she speak-sings, “Jazz and background / Chillin' after work.”

“It's just representative of, you know, this era we're in, this culture of convenience,” she says. “Music always represented a certain amount of freedom to me, and it feels like that’s kind of been blanketed over.”

Sonically, it is a message delivered atop a '70s groove, placing it in conversation with an era unshackled from these digital technologies.

The title, too, “is playing off the sort of passive nature of listening to music,” she says, “But also it could be seen as defiant. Like, I dare you to play me.”

There's also the blown-out “Subcon,” which examines the world's growing billionaire class and their fascination with space colonialization in a period of economic insecurity. In the song, Gordon's lyrical abstractions highlight the absurdity, taking aim at technocrats.

“I find reality inspirational, no matter how bad it is,” she says. Where some artists might veer away from the news, Gordon tackles truth. “I’m not sure what music is supposed to be. So, I’m just doing my version of it.”

In the end, she hopes listeners are “somewhat thrilled by” the album.

“'This is the music that I’ve wanted to hear,’ kind of feeling. Does that sound egotistical? I don’t know,” she laughs. If it is, it is earned.

1. “Play Me”

2. “Girl with a Look”

3. “No Hands”

4. “Black Out”

5. “Dirty Tech”

6. “Not Today”

7. “Busy Bee”

8. “Square Jaw”

9. “Subcon”

10. “Post Empire”

11. “Nail Bitter”

12. “Bye Bye 25!”

Kim Gordon poses for a portrait in New York on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)

Kim Gordon poses for a portrait in New York on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)

Kim Gordon poses for a portrait on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025, in New York (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)