The image of Saudi Arabia abroad is of a land teaming with wealth and opportunity — the “oil-rich desert Kingdom” as the international media insist on saying. Inside the Kingdom, it is a rather different picture. Yes, there is wealth and opportunity — and massive development — but there is also poverty. The slums of south Riyadh or south Jeddah are real and shocking. It is not expatriate laborers who live in such places; it is poor Saudis. They cannot afford anything better. Nor is poverty confined to places like Qarantina in Jeddah or Suwaidi in Riyadh. There is serious rural poverty as well; as elsewhere, it manifests itself in substandard, rundown accommodation.
For many years, Saudi poverty was a taboo subject, unspoken by those who saw it as shameful and who foolishly imagined that by ignoring it, it would go away. It was Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah who, as crown prince, broke the taboo. His unprecedented visit to the slums of Suwaidi just over three years ago brought poverty into the open and with it a determination address the issue.
Today, there is both good news and bad. According to the King Abdullah Charitable Housing Foundation, set up in the wake of the visit to provide accommodation for the poor, a million homes are needed. What makes that good news is that the problem is clearly now being assessed and quantified. The bad news is that it is an enormous mountain to climb. We must be thankful for the foundation’s plans to build 13,000 homes for the poor over the next few years — all extra homes are welcome — but the fact is they barely scratch the surface of the problem. At this rate it will take 100 years to meet the target.
It is not the foundation’s fault. It simply does not have the funds. Clearly more money — a lot more — has to be put into building homes. Some of that will come from charity, but much, probably the lion’s share, will have to come from government. Charity and government building programs are, however, not the sole remedy. If substandard and unacceptable housing is the consequence of poverty, the main causes are unemployment and low wages. Give people reasonably paid jobs and they will be able to afford reasonable housing.
There is, of course, the other, more sinister aspect of chronic joblessness. It drains hope and creates fertile territory for terrorism to breed. It is no accident that it is in the slums that the lure of the terrorist has been strongest. But it is not fear of terrorism that must drive the campaign for more homes for the poor, more jobs. It is an issue of justice. Saudi families have the right to expect a home of their own, a home preferably that they have acquired through their own efforts. If they cannot afford to buy them, they will have to be given them.
Thirteen thousand new homes for the poor is simply a drop in the ocean. Hundreds of thousands more must be planned. And that will also provide a massive amount of jobs — precisely what is wanted.
