Saudi Gazette report

JEDDAH — About 1,200 poor Saudi families will benefit from a new housing project, which is being implemented by King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Foundation for Development Housing.

“The project will be completed shortly and the selected families will move in to their new homes next year,” said Dr. Ahmed Al-Arjani, the foundation’s secretary general.

He said the new homes are designed in the form of villas, which will have separate living rooms for men and women in addition to a courtyard with an area of 450 to 500 meters.

“By the third quarter of 2017, the project will reach the final stage,” Al-Arjani told Al-Watan Arabic daily. A total of 8,400 Saudis will benefit from the project, he said calculating an average of seven members in each family.

Al-Arjani made this comment after distributing keys of 100 low-cost housing units in Wadi Al-Haya, near Surat Obaida, located in the southwestern part of the Kingdom.

The project in Wadi Al-Haya includes a mosque, a community hall, administrative offices and training halls. Plots have been allocated for a health center, schools for boys and girls and a cooperative society in the complex, the secretary general said.

He said there is no plan at the moment to increase the number of housing units in Wadi Al-Haya. “We’ll hand over 100 more villas in the Asir region shortly and these houses will have the same design and facilities,” he pointed out. The SR80 million project is located in Khabt Al-Hajari.

Al-Arjani said the charitable housing units are given to citizens with no houses of their own. “The foundation is in the process of constructing more low-cost houses in impoverished areas of the Kingdom for the benefit of poor people,” he said.

The foundation will provide maintenance services for the housing units it has constructed in different parts of the Kingdom. “We’ll also support projects to provide education, training and healthcare to members of families living in our housing units,” he said.

The foundation will appoint an official at every housing complex to support efforts of civil society in carrying out welfare projects for the benefit of poor families living in its housing units, in coordination with relevant government departments.

“We arrange different welfare programs depending on the need and situation of our beneficiaries. We support handicraft, cottage industries, agricultural programs, cattle rearing and fishing,” he said, adding that the foundation would meet the requirements of its beneficiaries.