We are standing outside a stone building that passes for a house.

It has no door or glass on the exposed windows, just a 3 meter opening covered by an old rug.

Sousanna Yeghtiaryan, the woman who squats in the building isn’t at home. Vahan Toumasyan, who heads the Shirak Center NGO, tells us that Sousanna usually returns around 5pm. Her neighbours tell us the same.

“She goes to the soup kitchen for something to eat and comes back,” says Tamara Yeghoyan, a neighbour. “Her divorced sister threw the poor woman out of the house and put the mother in an old age home.”

Tamara and other local residents helped Sousanna with what they could – an old bed, a rusty stove burner, clothes... Some neighbourhood boys even collected plastic sheeting to cover the exposed windows.

We were out in the street when Sousanna turned the corner, dragging a tree branch. The woman was wearing a pair of yellow summer pants. There were pieces of dry dung in one of her bags and the other contained bits of junk collected from here and there.

When a neighbour asked her where she had gotten off to, Sousanna answered, “I was out looking for some fuel to burn. That’s why I am late.”

When the 62 year-old woman spotted Vahan Toumasyan, her eyes lit up and she smiled.

The NGO head has been trying to get Sousanna a place to live for the past two months. There’s a lot of paperwork involved.

“They want to get you a temporary place in the dormitory until apartments are allocated next spring,” Toumasyan tells the woman.

Sousanna, her eyes narrowing, says she isn’t interested. “What dormitory? Who knows what kind of place they want to put me in? Let them give me a decent apartment,” she answers.

For one year, Sousanna had been camped out at the waiting hall in the Gyumri train station. The local authorities didn’t let her sleep there.

“They told me to move along, that I might present a danger to others. The station cops told me to go to the mayor’s office. That’s what I did. Anoushavan Papikyan told me it wasn’t his problem,” says Sousanna indifferently.

Sousanna Yeghtiaryan, a college graduate, worked for many years at the Stepanavan sewing factory as an engineer.

Her hands and fingers are cracked and blackened from the cold.

The family lost their two room apartment in the Spitak earthquake. The single woman was put on the list for a one room apartment after her son and sister died.

But she will only get the apartment next March. She has to get through the coming winter on her own.

Mr. Toumasyan wrote to the Minister of Urban Construction to intervene on behalf of Sousanna and to get her into one of the apartments in the Moush-2 neighborhood as soon as possible.

“It’s been two weeks without any answer. On October 20, I wrote to the Gyumri mayor to get her some temporary shelter. They haven’t answered either," says Toumasyan. “They should show a bit more flexibility in the matter. I really don’t think Sousanna will make it through the winter where she is living now.”

He says that 7 apartments allocated this year were taken back. The people either died or left.

“Should we let this woman die as well?” Toumasyan asks.

Toumasyan adds that Anoushavan Papikyan, who heads the apartment allocation committee in Gyumri promised to help Sousanna get temporary shelter at an October 19 meeting, but that nothing has been done to date.

Sousanna cannot understand the reluctance of officials, both local and national, to intervene in the matter. Neither can I.

As I say goodbye, I promise to return, bringing her some warm clothes and shoes.