According to Hans Christian Kofoed Charitable Foundation Director Shavarsh Khachatryan, there are around 1,000 homeless people in Yerevan. In December 2013, the homeless shelter in the village of Haghtanak was moved to Vardashen and combined with the Danish-Armenian Hans Christian Kofoed Charitable Foundation. There are currently 100 homeless people staying at the shelter, which means only 10% of the homeless have temporary shelter. There...
"I was the first one at this institution," said 50-year old Hrant Hovsepyan. The institution in question is a homeless shelter located in one of the buildings of Hostel No. 1. It has been around forty days since Hovsepyan, an immigrant from Baku, last spent his nights in a basement.
Yesterday, on 22 January 2006, journalists from Hetq Online and Yerkir Media TV, as well as the head of the "Gandzasar" Theological Center and "Vem" radio station, Father Mesrop Aramyan, took six people to a shelter for the homeless.
It was early in December when Onnik told me that he was going to dedicate his New Year to photographing the homeless and spend time with them.
It was possible that another bomzh died in the basement and the emergency services$ had came to take him, the tenants of Artsakh Street #8 probably thought when they saw an ambulance approaching their apartment building on the request of journalists.
Exactly one year ago Hetq Online published its special issue on homelessness in Yerevan. As a result of our research we discovered that approximately fifty homeless people in Yerevan die needlessly each year from the cold, and have done so for the past four years.
None of the homeless in Yerevan will be able to spend even one night in a shelter originally intended for them despite the fact that 85 million drams was allocated for its construction in the 2006 budget.
“Alone? Why am I alone?" asks Gohar rhetorically. "What about my Ministers?”
“In December, three homeless people that we knew died,” says Seryoja Vardazaryan, himself relegated to living on the streets.