The Ministry of Urban Construction is planning to build a neighborhood in the Shirak town of Maralik that will house senior citizens left homeless due to the 1988 earthquake that ravaged the provinces of both Shirak and Lori. The beneficiaries will be those elderly with no family to take care of them. Building #1 in the neighborhood is already built and will probably start to house the destitute individuals sometime this month.

“If you ask me, I’m against the project,” says Maralik Mayor Artak Gevorgyan. “I’ve been petitioning the government for a few years now to complete the monolith concrete structures started by the Latvian engineers back in the 1990’s. The town’s housing stock will increase and there would be ample apartments for growing families. Instead, they decided to construct a whole other neighborhood for the socially disadvantaged.” At the entrance to Maralik, we see the nine semi-completed buildings described by the mayor. The Latvian engineers began construction after the earthquake but then, due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were never finished. 50 families could go homeless if Building #5 collapses There are three homeless families in Maralik right now. Fifty more families will also become homeless if the fate of Building#5 on Second Street also is left to the hands of the emergency administration. For the past twenty years, residents of the building have been knocking on the doors of various agencies in the hope that someone will listen to the plight they face. Their building is on the verge of collapse. “Recently, the Shirak Regional Governor visited Maralik and we raised the issue with him. He replied that we have to be patient because there are more than eighty buildings in Gyumri on the verge of collapse and that priority must be given to the Gyumri situation,” said a local resident. Another stated, “We are well aware that this problem is widespread throughout the country. But is it right to show discrimination and say ‘You are from Maralik so bide your time. Maybe the building you live in will collapse, but there are other priorities’. But aren’t we Armenians as well; the same flesh and blood?” 62 year-old Hovhannes Manukyan, a resident of Building #5, tell us that the building was unstable from the day it was built. “The building opened its doors in 1986 and we’ve had problems ever since. The walls aren’t plastered and we haven’t made any repairs since we always think that we’ll move somewhere else. Then the earthquake struck and we lost all hope. The outer walls of this five storey building by the entrance have given way and nobody lives there out of fear.” After their son got married, the Manukyans decided to have the new wife registered as a resident in their apartment but were told that they didn’t have that right. “We removed the poor girl from her old registration address and they didn’t allow her to be registered here, arguing that the building was slated for demolition. We were forced to register her at the address of my brother,” chuckles Hovhannes Manukyan, adding that there are other families in the building with the same problem. Minister says it would cost too much to reinforce Building #5 Even though Maralik is supplied with gas, the residents of Building #5 use wood stoves for heating and cooking purposes. Since the building is unstable, gas hasn’t been hooked up. People say a prayer before going to sleep that the walls don’t collapse around them. “We all suffer from a case of the jitters,” explains resident Ruzanna Harutyunyan, “At every little jolt or shake we run out of the building. It’s been this way for the last twenty years. Two weeks ago the Minister for Urban Construction visited Maralik to survey the new government financed neighborhood for the needy. About twenty of us residents went out and gave him a piece of our mind and told him about our building’s problem. And would you believe it? He was very courteous and listened attentively but told us that they couldn’t stabilize the building since it would cost more than erecting a new one.” Residents have proposed that the semi-completed buildings be finished. As their contribution, the residents would take care of the interior decoration and utilities. The Minister agreed to the offer and directed the mayor to draft an outline of the residents’ plan and submit it to the ministry for further review. “See there, those are 2-3 story houses. For each the government would have to invest 150 million AMD to finish the construction for each one. To finish the construction of at least four, the government would have to spend a minimum of 600 million. But at least residents could leave their unstable houses,” calculates Mayor Gevorgyan. In a move to allay the concerns of residents, Mayor Gevorgyan proposed to the Minister of Urban Construction that 50% of the cost to complete the buildings be incurred by the town itself. The offer was refused. Even the residents proposed that they invest something towards the construction, just as long as they receive a new home. Resident Gohar Simonyan stated, “Otherwise we’ll wake up in the collapsed ruins of the building. This way, at least we’ll have a roof over our heads.” Residents of Maralik are not opposed to the building of the new neighborhood for the socially disadvantaged but are somewhat taken aback as to why their “barren, treeless and frigid” community was chosen as the site. They have also heard that homeless families from Lori have no wish to relocate to Maralik. “They taken a twelve apartment building and converted it to have twenty one room apartments,” says Mayor Gevorgyan. “The first floor is supposed to house the social services worker and the nurse’s office. But I don’t think the project will be warmly received. People from Gyumri don’t want to move here and we don’t have eligible recipients in town to move into the buildings. That’s why I believe that a resolution of the housing problem faced by residents of the dilapidated building should perhaps be given priority.