Eighty percent of Cambodia’s people live in rural areas, where their principal occupation is subsistence farming on family-operated holdings. In rural Cambodia, most houses are built of palm leaf and bamboo and are often raised on stilts for protection from annual floods. A rural village (phum) consists of a group of houses, usually clustered around a Buddhist monastery, or wat. In the cities, life for the poor resembles life in the countryside, but sanitary conditions are worse and violent crime is much more frequent. Wealthy and middle-class Cambodians value material possessions, which reflect their social standing. In the 1990s hundreds of extravagant villas were built for members of the political and commercial elite.