The neighborhood is so lacking in hygienic-sanitary conditions that residents are in a constant battle with mice and other larger vermin. In their words, city officials graze their animals at the river banks and passersby throw their trash in the stream so that the flow of the river has changes. Last year European Council Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg visited the area and indignantly declared that, “It’s tragic and disconcerting that nineteen years on the ROA Government hasn’t insured normal living conditions for the people. Every individual has the right to a roof over their head and to be protected from the rain and rodents.” Despite the fact that the CoE’s Human Rights Commissioner promised to write a stinging report on the matter and obligate the Armenian government to find solutions, residents of the neighborhood no longer believe anyone.
 
The six member family of Araksya Harutyunyan has been living in the bus station area for twenty years now, in a decrepit, decaying hut, in which one cannot even move around freely. During our visit to the bus station the lady of the house observed jokingly, “If it weren’t for reporters no one would remember us.” The Harutyunyan family is one of the few that hasn’t been allocated an apartment or availed themselves of any assistance even though four family members were killed in the earthquake.

During her conversation with Hetq, Mrs. Araksya described her life thusly, “After the earthquake my husband lost his family, his wife, two kids and a brother. I lost my mother. Our new family, essentially, was formed in the hut. My three boys were born and raised here. In the beginning we were 29th on the list of the homeless and by pushing and pulling, we clawed our way to the 15th spot. Just imagine how many times we went to the Mayor’s Office and told them that this family has lost four members but their only response was, be patient, sooner or later you’ll be given an apartment. That’s like a dream to us. My eldest son draws plans all day long on paper, saying this will be the design of our new apartment. This is no place to live. It’s the worst and largest of the hut neighborhoods. People die from the horrible vapors of sewer waters from the river that gets really bad in the hot summer. In the winter, it gets deadly cold here and damp. Can six people possibly live in such tight quarters and for how long? We’re fed-up already. Just imagine that mice are our friends.

Let’s go to the shower and see the cracks and crevices they’ve gnawed open. My son here loves biology and he collects all kinds of bugs and crawly things here in bottles and performs little experiments on them. The animal world has become a natural way of life for us. And I’m not even talking about what happens when it rains. Last year they supposedly repaired the “domik” (hut). We said now we can live a bit better. In one day all their supposed repairs fell apart. They have removed a large number of huts from this neighborhood. Those that are left are like us, those with few privileges although if we applied we’d get the largest privileges. Then there are those in real poverty who are slowly dying off. The kids in this neighborhood have no place to play and no possibility of breathing clean air. It gets dangerous her in the springtime when the banks of the “Dirty River” overflow and flood the huts. All the city’s sewer pipes empty out here. That’s why the children get sick. My youngest boy has a strong pain and suffers from rheumatism and imagines that in a few years they want to take my boys off to the army with bad feet. But I ask you in exchange for what good life? Let them be considerate and create suitable conditions for us and we’d supply them with healthy soldiers. My mother-in-law die in this hut from the dampness and my father-in-law, the city’s most famous artisans became sick as well. He had hands of gold but he can no longer leave the hut, his lungs are in a sorry state. But let me add that if they intend to build homes in the Moush district for the homeless I would never move there. I have always lived in the center of town. Why would I get up and move to the sticks to live. If one is attacked my dogs here, in Moush you’ll be attacked by wolves. If Moush was such a great place then those who received homes there would pack up and go and not stay here to rot away. During all this time the only official that pays attention to us now and then is the Mayor of Gyumri. One time he had to come here straight away because three of our neighbors fell into the waters. I invite the president and prime minister of this country to come visit my hut. Let them bring their wives and kids and spend just one week here during the depths of winter. Let them leave their luxuries behind and see how us ordinary folk live. Let them for one day burn diesel oil and wash their clothes in cold water to understand what the word homeless means. Go and tell them exactly that. We have lived our entire life dreaming of a home but we haven’t seen it. At least we should have a roof over our children’s heads. I don’t want anything more from God.
  
The hut residents in the center of the city, along Kostoyan, Manushyan and Textilagordzneri Streets find themselves in equally bad straits as the family of Araksya Harutyunyan. Contrary to the bus station, here the Mayor’s Office is compelling homeless residents to immediately get their act together and leave the area. The reason, according to residents, is to protect the interest of the wealthy who want to build restaurants and hotels in the center of the city. As a solution the city and regional authorities have offered residents payment vouchers for apartments but not all have been able to obtain an apartment with the limited amounts being offered.

Sonia Tatevosyan’s five member family has already returned the vouchers three times since the amounts didn’t correspond to market prices and the family doesn’t have the means to supplement what the government is offering in order to at least buy a two room flat. Due to the dampness in the hut Sonia Tatevosyan is now bed-ridden. As she puts it, her intestines have worn away. “I have always lived in the center of the city, in a well-lit, pretty apartment. Our house was a bit further up from here. When the quake hit I was in the electro-technical factory. The entire building collapsed and I saw many people die before my eyes and I couldn’t imagine how I would continue with my life in this unfortunate town. But I love this city so much that I haven’t left for one day, not even for one hour. In the beginning, we pitched tents and lit bonfires to keep warm. Then we moved into a “domik”. We haven’t been able to move out since. My husband died dreaming of having an apartment and my grandchildren were born not knowing the meaning of a house. What really hurts is that this growing family hasn’t seen any improvements in its lifetime. According to Government Decision #431, we are only eligible to get an apartment with the same number of rooms as we had before the earthquake. In other words, if your family has grown to ten members after the quake it doesn’t matter, you can still only get two rooms because that is what you had lost. I don’t know how our problem will be resolved. We got a certificate three times but we couldn’t come up with the additional 5-10 thousand dollars needed to go out and buy a normal apartment. The certificates expire in six months and we knocked on practically every door in the city but to no avail. The certificates expired and we remained homeless, as you see us now.” Parenthetically, Sonia Tatevosyan also stated that if an apartment was allocated to them in the far-off neighborhood of Moush, they’d turn it down.
 
Here, we should report that the Armenian government has already signed a contract with the Glendale Hills firm to build apartments in the Moush and Ani neighborhoods of Gyumri that stipulates that by 2010 the housing question for the city’s 2,300 homeless residents must be resolved. In the Gyumri neighborhood of Ani at least 400 apartments are slated to be constructed and 1,900 in the Moush #2 neighborhood. Overall, according to the special government session that took place in Gyumri on June 12th, by 2013 the government is mandated to resolve the apartment issue for 6,985 families of which 4,420 are in Shirak, 2,403 in Lori, 149 in Aragatzotn and 13 in Tavoush. Amazingly however this government program has saddened, rather than brought joy, to the homeless of Gyumri since, in the main, when it comes to choosing the areas for the new construction, their opinions haven’t been taken into account.

We questioned Albert Margaryan, who heads the Urban Construction Department at the Shirak Regional Governor’s Office, why the experts had proposed the outlying areas of the city for apartment construction. In passing, we should point out that the Mayor of Gyumri doesn’t see eye to eye with the plan. This past August when Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan visited Gyumri, Mayor Vardan Ghoukasyan suggested to him that apartments for the homeless be built in the center of town but the Prime Minister shot down the idea noting that the center was reserved for luxury residences only. The Prime Minister’s visit lead to a whole new argument in the town that pitted the homeless, representatives of various NGO’s and construction specialists against the employees of the Regional Department of Urban Construction, charging that the latter purposefully pointed out the wrong areas to the Prime Minister just to spite Mayor Ghoukasyan. However Regional Construction Department Head Margaryan states that his office had no disagreements with the experts from the Gyumri Municipality’s Department of Urban Construction and that the latter merely proposed other areas of the city as potential building sites and that in the end the government picked Ani and Moush because they were more suitable construction sites. “The Minister of Urban Construction personally came and inspected all the sites but picked those two in terms of construction feasibility and ease. The selection has been finalized for those two sites. Of course, the apartment construction project will not end with 2,300 units. The next stage, in my opinion, will take place within the city limits. 2,300 families will receive apartments and an equal number of huts will be removed. The city will get cleaned up and it will be that much easier to build within the city,” stated Mr. Albert Margaryan.
 
The Regional Government official also stated that 6,800 huts remain in Gyumri of which only 2,500 are inhabited by “earthquake homeless”. The rest are inhabited by “homeless families due to non-earthquake circumstances”. In other words, the government is not obligated to provide the latter category with apartments. Mr. Albert Margaryan also noted that today’s figure of 4,008 homeless in Gyumri could rise given a recounting to be conducted by the city’s municipality as prescribed by a recent government decision. This time around, the homeless registers might also include all those who, for a variety of inappropriate reasons, were never officially registered as such.

We should point out that the true number of homeless in Gyumri hits 8,000. Every year, for some inexplicable reason, the government chooses to neglect the residents of 88 structurally unsound buildings who, despite waging a life and death struggle with their surroundings (it appeared to us that a light wind could knock the buildings down) are still stubbornly denied access to the homeless rolls.