Housing overcrowding in the Maldives is driven by unaffordability, but also by care needs. When older relatives have no accessible housing option nearby, families consolidate into one unit. Adult children feel obligated – and genuinely want – to care for aging parents, but the only way to do so is often to share already-cramped apartments. Our research found that this consolidation intensifies conflict, increases women's unpaid care burden, and reduces privacy and stability in marriages. Young couples trying to build their own family lives find themselves without space for intimacy or independence. Women in particular face impossible trade-offs: they are expected to be primary caregivers for elderly relatives while also raising children and often working, with no room of their own and no realistic choice about any of it. The stress this places on marriages is significant and measurable – not failures of family values or filial piety, but predictable outcomes of a housing system that forces families to choose between abandoning elderly parents to isolation or compressing multiple generations into spaces that cannot accommodate them.
The alternative of elderly living alone in scattered apartments is not a solution either. Many elderly in the Maldives currently live in units they can rarely leave – apartments up flights of stairs they cannot safely navigate, in buildings without reliable lifts, in neighbourhoods with no accessible walkways or amenities within reach. They become effectively shut-in, isolated not by choice but by the physical constraints of housing that was never designed for aging bodies. Social disconnection accelerates cognitive decline, worsens depression, and increases mortality risk. The elderly need to be integrated within communities, in regular contact with their families and with peers their age, with access to the outdoors and to social life – not confined to apartments they cannot escape.
Proximity without co-residence
The proposal is to include a share of senior-friendly units within mixed housing developments – blocks designed specifically for older people to live safely and autonomously, with health supervision and caretaking services present, located close to family but not requiring co-residence in the same overcrowded apartment. As government promotes mass rollout of public housing options including mixed-income high-density models, a portion of units in these developments should be designated and designed for elderly residents. These would feature accessibility throughout: step-free access, reliable lifts, grab bars, appropriate bathroom and kitchen layouts, emergency call systems, and safe common areas. Beyond physical design, these blocks would include health monitoring services, regular check-ins, exercise programs and physiotherapy, and social programming that keeps residents connected to each other and to the wider community.
The key insight is that proximity without co-residence solves problems that neither separation nor consolidation can address. When senior-friendly blocks are located within the same developments as general housing, elderly parents can live a brief walk from their adult children's apartments. Families can still have dinner together regularly. Grandparents can see grandchildren. Adult children can check in daily and provide support. But everyone also has their own space. Young couples have the privacy and independence that healthy marriages require. Women have realistic choices about caregiving rather than being trapped by housing constraints – they can provide care and connection without it consuming their entire lives and homes. The elderly, for their part, gain autonomy rather than dependence: they live in units suited to their needs, with peers nearby, with professional health support available, with the ability to walk around their building and neighbourhood rather than being confined to a single apartment.
Benefits across generations
From a healthy aging perspective, this model allows elderly to age in place within communities, in regular proximity to peers their age as well as their own families and the wider community. They retain autonomy in units with accessibility features, reliable infrastructure, and safe layouts. Health monitoring and social programming keep older residents connected, and catch health issues early rather than waiting for crises. Regular exercise programs and physiotherapy help maintain mobility and independence for longer. Intergenerational contact – with family, with children in the development, with the broader community – provides the social engagement that research consistently links to better cognitive and physical health outcomes.
For younger families, the ability of couples to have privacy and independence in their living conditions while still seeing their elderly parents day-to-day reduces the pressures and stressors that our research identified as affecting marriages and driving conflict. The care relationship becomes sustainable rather than all-consuming. Women in particular gain options they currently lack: the ability to maintain close relationships with aging parents, to participate in their care, but also to have lives and homes and careers of their own. The goal is housing that allows those relationships to flourish without crushing everyone involved. Continued family connection across generations, with the physical infrastructure that makes such connection sustainable rather than a source of chronic stress and conflict.