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Housing shortage for low-income in Yemen: Causes and suggestions

Article  in  International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis · October 2009

DOI: 10.1108/17538270910992809

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Housing shortage for Housing

shortage for
low-income in Yemen: causes low-income
and suggestions
Wa’el Alaghbari, Azizah Salim and Kamariah Dola 363
Faculty of Design and Architecture, Architecture Department,
University Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia, and Received 16 April 2009
Revised 25 April 2009
Abang Abdullah Abang Ali Accepted 6 June 2009
Housing Research Center, University Putra Malaysia, Faculty of Engineering,
Civil Engineering Department, Selangor, Malaysia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that cause housing shortage for low-
income groups in Yemen and recommend some solutions to alleviate the problem.
Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire survey has been used as the tool to carry out this
study. The first part of the questionnaire consisted of three groups namely: economic, administrative,
and legal factors. The second part consists of suggestions on housing supply, construction methods,
and materials used for low-cost housing in Yemen. The level of importance of the categories was
measured and the relative importance of weightage was ranked.
Findings – The results show that the most important economic factors causing housing shortage
were poor handling of available economic resources and shortage of economic resources. The most
important administrative factors causing housing shortage were lack of organization and
synchronization and not conducting studies on housing. The most important legal factor causing
housing shortage was lack of legalization of housing.
Originality/value – The findings could be used to improve housing policies and strategy in Yemen
in order to decrease the housing shortage, particularly for the low-income group.
Keywords Housing, Low pay, Disadvantaged groups, Yemen
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Housing plays a very important role in the human life and its society. Housing has a
tremendous social and economic impact on our lives and the way we live. It has direct
and immediate influence on health, education, economy, environment, political and
social life of any society (Sinha, 1978). The problem of shortage of houses for the low-
income group in developing countries is critical. High levels of poverty and
unemployment, and increased land cost have contributed to the formation of squatter
settlements surrounding many urban centers in developing countries. This form of
urban sprawl mainly represents people who have obtained employment in urban
centers, but cannot afford accommodation within the cities (Bordignon, 1998).
Moreover, Sinha (1978) mentioned that the conventional method is becoming expensive
and the housing provision is very slow considering the speed of the growth of demand.
Yemen is one of the developing countries that suffer from the problem of housing
shortage. The high growth of the population of Yemen and the return of more than a
million of its immigrants after the second Gulf War have caused an increase in the International Journal of Housing
demands of housing. This is also due to the continuous use of conventional Markets and Analysis
Vol. 2 No. 4, 2009
construction method as well as the slow-pace of construction and its increasing cost of pp. 363-372
housing. The problem has worsened as the government is not making the necessary # Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1753-8270
plans or arrangements to meet these demands and solve consequences of this issue. DOI 10.1108/17538270910992809
IJHMA The rapid urban growth has also made the need for adequate housing for the low-
2,4 income group an important concern of the Yemeni government, especially in Sana’a
Djebarni and Al-Abed (2000) and Al-Abed (2003).
The main problem lies in the need for houses particularly for the low-income group.
The problem experienced by the low-income group can be observed clearly through the
informal housing patterns such as the existence of squatter and slum areas, which are
built as an urgent and immediate solution for this group of people. The problem of
364 housing shortage is worsened as the government did not have the necessary plans or
arrangements to meet the increasing demands.
This paper seeks to identify the factors that cause the problems of housing shortage for
the low-income group in Yemen and will recommend some solutions for these problems.

Housing in Yemen
The problem of housing in Yemen does not differ much from that of other developing
countries, in terms of importance and causes. A group of variables that relate to most
aspects of life affects housing. These factors are mentioned in the United Nations
report in (1996). These factors are as follows:
. Population: the increasing number of population; 15,804, 665 persons as of (1994),
16,500,000 in (1997), 19,607,000 in (2002) and 20,727,063 in (2005) (National
Centre for Information, Yemen, 2007).
. Yearly population growth rate was an average of 3.7 percent in (1994) (World Bank,
2000) and 3.5 percent in (2005) (National Centre for Information, Yemen, 2007).
. Average of family size in Yemen is 6.6 people in (1994) (Haglan, 1998), and 6.9 in
2004 where the average of family size in Sana’a is 6.5 people (Yemen National
Census, 2004).
. Number of housing units in Yemen were 2,192,458 units in (1994) and increased
to 2,834,437 units with 267,125 units in Sana’a (Yemen National Census, 2004).
Aldhabebi (2007) mentioned that the housing shortage in Yemen is 787,069 units
including the replacement of some of unsuitable units. This number of housing
shortage excludes the rented units and Islamic organizations’’ ownership units
(wakf) which are 512,919 units (Yemen National Census, 2004). The total housing
shortage in Yemen is 1,299,988 units.
. Yemen has no financial or human resources with which to start any housing
projects, especially projects to cater for the low-income group. It also does not
have the necessary managerial expertise for these projects.
. The city of Sana’a, within its capacity as the capital of Yemen, has undergone
tremendous urban growth in the last half century. It has the fastest-growing towns
in the nation (Yemen National Census, 2004). The Yemen national censuses of 1994
and 2004 show that the number of population in Sana’a city increased rapidly from
1,003,627 in 1994 to 1,747,627 in 2004 with an annual growth of 5.5 percent, which
is an increase of 2.5 percent or more than the annual population growth of Yemen.
The growth has created a higher urban land demand than the previous decades,
leading to significant change of landscape and land uses.
Housing is a big problem in Yemen, especially for political, financial and social planners.
It is most noticeable in large cities, like the political capital, Sana’a that represents a
prime example of the problem. The households of the four main cities (Sana’a, Aden,
Taiz and Hodaidah) represent 12 percent of the population (World Bank, 2000). Urban Housing
dwellers made up 28 percent of the entire population of the Yemeni Republic in 2002. shortage for
Al-Ansi (2006) presents that the growth rate of urban population in the four main cities is
10 percent, where 3 percent is due to natural growth and 7 percent is growth due to low-income
internal migration.
The main causes of internal migration are as follows:
. Economic factors, as most ministries and departments, public institutions, semi- 365
public businesses, and other businesses are in the cities where jobs are available.
. Political factors, resulting from these cities being the center of management,
organizations and media outlets.
. Social and cultural factors represented by the provision of health, educational
services, and a sense of cultural cohesion.
. The existence of old buildings (50 years and above) which have started to
deteriorate, and they must be rebuilt or replaced every year because of the high land
cost. The buildings that are demolished every year are an approximate 2 per cent of
the total housing units in Yemen, which, in turn are estimated at 2,192,458 housing
units. As such, 44,000 units must be built annually as replacements.
. The problem of housing has increased due to the Gulf crisis, as tens of thousands
of Yemeni expatriates returned from various Gulf countries especially from
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. This has led to a minor housing emergency, which
needs to be dealt by the authorities responsible for housing plans, and a solution
for this problem needs to be found.

Methodology
The sampling frame for the questionnaire in this study was purposive sampling which
was used to select the samples based on the specific purposes of answering a research
question. Data for the study were collected from the questionnaire by interviews with
professionals such as architects, structural engineers, projects managers, and
consultants who are working in the housing sector in the Ministry of Public Works and
consultant companies in which these respondents were deliberately selected to obtain
important information. A total of 60 samples were selected for the professionals’’
interview surveys where 55 samples were finally used in the analysis as five samples
were incomplete and rejected. Twenty-nine percent of the professionals in this survey
are qualified in civil engineering, 49 percent are in architecture, 12 percent are in
project management and 10 percent are working in the housing sector.

Data analysis
Descriptive statistics were conducted for comparing the mean of all factors and their
percentage. The respondents identify variables that they perceived as likely to contribute
to ranking the suggestions of professionals for housing supply, materials and
construction methods for low-cost housing by responding to a scale from 1 to 5. The five
rating Likert scale is 1 ¼ very strong relationship, 2 ¼ strong relationship, 3 ¼ medium
relationship, 4 ¼ weak relationship, and 5 ¼ very weak relationship or no relationship.
This scale was chosen to avoid neutral answers which do not provide answer on the
strongest or the weakest with the statements. Mean score (MS) of each factor was
IJHMA calculated by using the following formula (Chan and Kumaraswamy, 1996; Alaghbari,
2,4 2005; Alaghbari et al., 2007, 2008):
P 
ðf  sÞ
MS ¼ ð1  MS  5Þ
n

where MS ¼ mean score, f ¼ frequency of responses to each rating (1-5), s ¼ score

366 given to each factor by the respondents and ranges from 1 to 5, n ¼ total number of
responses concerning that factor.

Result and discussion

There are many factors influencing housing supply such as economic condition,
housing cost, and availability of credits.

Factors influencing housing supply in Yemen

The survey demonstrated that 86 percent of the professionals responded that there is a
shortage of low-cost housing for the low-income group in Yemen. The people build
their own houses in Yemen and there is no housing supply by the government until
now. The lack of housing supply in Yemen is related to many factors, which are
summarized as follows:

Economic condition
Figure 1 of the result revealed that 60 percent of poor handling of available economic
resources caused housing shortage in Yemen. The result showed that 25 percent of it is
related to the shortage of economic resources. Alaghbari (2008) found that the
economic condition and incertitude cost of exchange money was the fourth significant
factor influencing the housing cost in Yemen.
This result was also stated by Ofori (2000) that the economies of many developing
countries are currently confronted by severe difficulties owing to a combination of lower
commodity prices, higher energy costs, falling exchange rates, and rising inflation. In
addition, UNCED (1992) and CIB/UNEP-IETC (2002) the Agenda 21 for sustainable

Figure 1.
Economic factors causing
housing shortage for
low-income in Yemen
construction in developing countries identified main factors such as using economical Housing
solutions and appropriate cost effective technologies in construction systems can bring
down the cost of construction within the affordability level of the people.
shortage for
The result in Figure 2 indicated that administrative factors caused housing shortage low-income
in Yemen where 42 percent are related to the lack of organization and synchronization
and 36 percent are related to not providing studies on housing.
The housing sector affects the broader economy. As stated in the housing policy paper
of the World Bank (1993), housing investments, employment generated by the housing
367
sector and costs are the real effects that the housing sector has on the economy. In
Figure 3, the results revealed that legal factors also caused housing shortage in Yemen

Figure 2.
Administrative factors
causing housing shortage
for low-income in Yemen

Figure 3.
Legal factors causing
housing shortage for
low-income in Yemen
IJHMA and especially in Sana’a. A total of 90 percent of housing shortage is because of the lack
of legalization and policy of housing. Moreover, the absence of law and legalizations of
2,4 housing caused the absence of encouragement of investments in the housing sector.

Housing cost in Yemen

Alaghbari (2008) mentioned that there are many factors influencing housing cost in
Yemen. The most significant factor influencing housing cost is ‘‘land cost’’. The cost of
368 land is very high in Yemen. Most lands are owned by the private sectors and some
people use the land in business as easy ways in investing their money. This increases
the demand for lands and subsequently increases the cost of lands in the market. In
addition, the cost of cement is the second factor and the cost of steel for reinforced
concrete is the third factor influencing the cost of housing in Yemen.
Sultan and Kajewski (2005) presented that the building construction costs in Yemen
registered an increase in rates year after year at scales much faster than inflation. The
increase in the cost of basic input materials like steel, cement, brick, timber and other
materials as well as the cost of construction labour, buildings cost increased at around
20 to 30 percent annually. Baharoglu et al. (2005) presented that the ratio of the price of
house to income in Yemen is the highest compared with the Middle East and North
Africa (MENA) region countries and also the growth of demand is very high.

Suggestions for resolving housing supply

Alaghbari (2008) found that most households in Yemen do not have the ability to afford
own houses. Therefore, it is necessary for these people to get a loan from banks in order
to purchase their houses.
The result of the survey on the professionals’ suggestions for resolving housing
supply for low-income in Yemen is presented in Table I. It shows that ready made
houses built and distributed by the government is the best suggestion for resolving
housing supply for the low-income group in Yemen.
Table II shows that the professionals had some suggestions for housing shortage
solutions. These are that government should build public housing projects for the

Table I. Suggestions for resolving housing supply Ranking Mean SD

Professionals’
suggestions for Ready made houses build and distributed by the government 1 1.50 0.505
resolving housing Staged building start with basic house (core house) 2 1.56 0.501
supply for low-income in Basic traditional building (good physical qualities) 3 1.74 0.443
Yemen Personalized help (self-build) 4 1.82 0.388

Suggestions to solve housing shortage problem Ranking Mean SD

Public housing projects for low-income 1 1.40 0.495

Establish new housing strategy 2 1.44 0.501
Government financial support people 3 1.48 0.505
Table II. Establish new policies 4 1.60 0.495
Professionals’ suggestion Banks loans for long time (more than 20 years) 5 1.66 0.479
a solution of housing Encouragement the investments in housing 6 1.72 0.454
shortage problem for Authorities, government and non-government organizations build houses 7 1.92 0.274
low-income in Yemen Suggestions of housing types for low-income 8 3.57 1.809
low-income group and distribute the houses for the people, to establish new housing Housing
policies and the government’s financial support to the people.
shortage for
Construction methods of low-cost housing low-income
Table III shows that the concrete frame was suggested as the best construction method
for low-cost housing projects in Yemen in meeting the needs of low-rise flats. Currently,
traditional methods (concrete blocks or stone walls and wooden roof covered by mud)
are still used in Yemen because of the high prices of cement and steel which are used in
369
the concrete frame. The physical quality of the traditional method is poor and needs to
be improved. The traditional method is slow which cannot meet the high demands of
housing. Low-rise flats were suggested to be used in housing projects to increase the
density and to reduce land cost. In addition, there is one disadvantage of using this
traditional method; it cannot be used in building multi-story houses.

Materials of low-cost housing

It is very clear from Table IV that the professionals suggested the concrete blocks as the best
material to be used in low-cost housing project for the low-income group in Yemen.
Moreover, the local cheap stones were suggested as the second choice material to be used in
low-cost housing. This finding is as same as the study conducted by Al-Kahtani and
Al-Darzi (2007), which found that concrete blocks are the best choice available for low-
income people in Yemen. However, the cost of stone is about ten times more than the concrete
block. The using of concrete block recommended by Al-Kahtani and Al-Darzi (2007) as a
new and good alternative can be chosen and adopted in housing construction for the low-
income group in Yemen. The uses of new building materials as well as concrete blocks are
needed to accompany the development (Dewsbury et al., 2002 and Alsaleh, 2004).

Conclusion
The results show that 60 percent of housing shortage was due to poor handling of
available economic resources, while 25 percent was due to shortage of economic

Construction method suggested for low-cost housing Ranking Mean SD

Concrete frame 1 2.16 1.491

Traditional method (concrete blocks or stone walls
and wooden roof covered by mud) 2 2.41 1.300
External and internal load bearing walls 3 2.67 1.068
External load bearing walls and central concrete columns 4 2.52 0.976
Industrialized building systems 5 3.21 1.670
Other construction methods 6 3.33 0.577
Table III.
Professionals’ suggestion
for construction method
of low-cost housing

Materials suggested for low-cost housing Ranking Mean SD

Concrete blocks 1 1.51 0.739

Local cheap stones 2 2.16 1.167 Table IV.
Other materials as (sandwich panels) 3 2.25 1.500 Professionals’ suggestion
Local blocks (yagoor) 4 2.57 1.148 for materials of
Burn red blocks 5 3.30 0.858 low-cost housing
IJHMA resources. In addition, there were also administrative factors causing housing shortage
2,4 for the low-income group in Yemen. The results show that 42 percent of the housing
shortage was attributed to lack of organization and synchronization, 36 percent to not
conducting studies on housing and 90 percent to lack of legalization of housing.
Moreover, the absence of law and legalizations on housing has caused the absence of
investments in the housing sector. Housing finance programs are still premature in
370 Yemen. Therefore, some of the professional respondents have suggested that the
government build low-cost housing projects for low-income groups and distribute the
houses equally to the people.
The professionals have suggested that the concrete blocks were the best material to
be used in building internal and external walls for low-cost housing in Yemen.
However as the high cost of land in Yemen was also a problem as in some cases, it has
accounted for 40 to 50 percent of the total cost of houses. Therefore, the professionals
have suggested that low-rise flats or apartments would be the best low-cost housing
type instead of high-rise flats or apartments because the latter needs high technology
and sophisticated construction methods, which are expensive. In addition, the
professionals have also suggested that the reinforced concrete frame structure would
be the best structure to be used and the traditional method was suggested to be the best
construction method in housing projects but some professionals suggested that the
new systems as well as the IBS could be used in big projects.

Recommendations
Based on this study, the following recommendations are made:
(1) Sourcing for cheaper building materials, housing systems and appropriate
financial resources need to be taken seriously by the government in the
provision of low-cost housing in Sana’a, Yemen.
(2) The increasing land demand has increased land prices, forcing low-income
people to settle outside the planned boundaries. Therefore, planning procedures
need to be simplified as much as possible. The government needs to be
responsible for functional urban planning and the delivery of serviced land,
which provides offsite infrastructure.
(3) The government should increase land subsidies to control the land cost and to
meet the high demand for land. The government should increase subsidies for
cement and steel to meet the rapid demand for these materials.

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About the authors
Wa’el Alaghbari obtained a BSc in Architectural Engineering in 1995 and has worked as a
Lecturer in the Engineering Faculty, Architecture Department, Sana’a University, Republic of
Yemen. He obtained an MSc in Project Management in 2005 from University Putra Malaysia.
Currently he is a PhD candidate in Architecture Studies, Faculty of Design and Architecture,
University Putra Malaysia. Wa’el Alaghbari is the corresponding author and can be contacted at:
wail42311@yahoo.com
Azizah Salim is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Design and Architecture, Architecture
Department, University Putra Malaysia.
Kamariah Dola is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Design and Architecture, Landscape
Department, University Putra Malaysia.
Abang Abdullah Abang Ali is a Director of the Housing Research Center (HRC), Civil
Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, University Putra Malaysia.

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