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Yeranuhi Soghoyan

In Temporary Housing, Permanently

Everyone knows Mushegh the shoe-repairman in the Avtokayan trailer park in Gyumri. Mushegh Kirakosyan and his family have lived here for thirteen years now. In September 2002, however, they were celebrating life in their newly built apartment in the Mush 2 district, never imagining that they'd soon be living in a trailer once again.

"We moved into our new apartment on September 26 th . Several months later, my father got sick. I thought it was because of that house. It was made of concrete; there was no central heating so we were only able to heat one room out of three. My father was sick, and it got worse in the new apartment. We took him to the hospital, and soon the question of surgery came up," Mushegh recounted. The family was forced to sell the apartment they had lived in for only a year. They hoped to spend part of the money on the operation and buy a two-room apartment with the rest. But once the new initiative Apartment Purchase Orders was launched, prices rose so much that they weren't able to buy even a single room. "At that time, in 2003, we sold our apartment for $3,800. After taking care of few expenses we were left with $2,000. Then, a one-room apartment cost $2,800-$3,500. We couldn't buy an apartment so instead we bought a trailer for $300, and gradually spent the rest of the money," explained Mushegh's wife Varduhi.

The Kirakosyans have three children; the oldest is eleven years old, the youngest three. They were all born in a trailer. The family has a modest income, comprised of child support from the government and whatever Mushegh manages to earn. They live hand to mouth. "So little money comes in that there's no way we can save money to buy or build a house. We can't ask anyone for anything. We already received an apartment from the government. We shouldn't have sold it but the circumstances were beyond our control. But if we had had work at the time it's possible we wouldn't have taken that step and now the children would have a home. Sometimes we buy lottery tickets, but we never win anything," Varduhi continued.

There are many families like the Kirakosyans in Gyumri. But nobody talks about them out loud now, since there is still a large number of families without shelter waiting for their turn in the apartment queue. Families like the Kirakosyans, who are no longer in line for housing, buy cheap temporary shelters in the city's two large trailer parks. The government is at present little concerned about these trailer parks or the people who inhabit them; considering that it has already paid them their due.

Taking into account this sad reality, starting from 2000 all the buildings built with Red Cross financing were given to residents on a probationary basis, according to which inhabitants of the new apartments had to return their trailers to the government and not sell or buy new real estate for five years.

In 2001 a new organization was formed with the assistance of Gyumri City Council to handle the issue of moving people out and dismantling the trailers. It seems, however, that this organization has not achieved its goal entirely, since people still continue to buy trailers for residency purposes. The Kirakosyans told us that when they received an apartment, they turned over their trailer and it was immediately bulldozed.

Will Gyumri be ever free of these temporary dwelling? For years, the answer to this question was invariably an optimistic yes. But now, seventeen years after the terrible earthquake which killed 25,000 people on December 7 1988, the trailers are an undeniable part of the city. There are two big trailer parks, Avtokayan and Fantanner , which will be around for several more years at least. It's unknown how many people live in these trailers. They too, at some time, received apartments from the government as compensation, but sold them, for whatever reasons, and ended up in trailers again, perhaps permanently, but this time of their own volition.

When we asked, "What would you have done if you hadn't been able to buy this trailer?" the Kirakosyans just shrugged their shoulders. "I don't have a clue what will happen in the future; I worry about it every night," Varduhi said.

When we asked people in these trailer parks what they would do once the parks were closed down, nobody had an answer.

Photographs by Onnik Krikorian

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