Just some hints:
1/ check if RaiseError or PrintError attributes are set when db connection established - if no, your dbh related commands could quietly fail
2/ check if the query really returns some rows - run this query on some sql-console directly.
3/ This cannot solve your problem, but it it better strategy, imho: Use '?' in queries and bind parameters. I think that

'..._area LIKE ?;'
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is more readable and avoids potentiality of SQL-injection