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Sara Petrosyan

New housing creates new problems in Gyumri

Sara Petrosyan
Ruzan Minasyan

In Gyumri, shacks are being torn down on land intended for the new apartment buildings funded by the Lincy Foundation. These were the shacks that families left homeless by the 1988 earthquake managed to come by at any price, and now these families have been told to vacate them. Local officials have assured the families that they will be given their own apartments in two years time. Until that happy day, which most residents doubt will ever arrive, they will have to rent apartments. To this end, the government has allocated 30 million Drams (about $55,000), and the Gyumri Mayor’s Office will be giving them 10,000 Drams (about $18) a month to pay the rent. But people in Gyumri wonder who will be paying the rent in two years. Nobody can answer this question, but those who don’t vacate the shacks voluntarily are being evicted by the court.

Providing the earthquake victims with housing has become a never-ending task. In 2001, when the Lincy Foundation initiated the construction of apartment buildings, an announcement was made asking all those who remained homeless to register. 6,200 families did so, and the foundation was requested to build 7,000 apartments. But now that the Lincy Foundation construction project has come to completion, it has turned out that as of the first week of September 2003 there were yet another 7,185 homeless families. People are racking their brains to understand how the number of homeless families has doubled in two years. The Gyumri mayor refused to talk to us, so we were left without a solution to this puzzle. But the head of the city’s housing department, Garik Ghazaryan, gave us completely different figures.

When we asked, “How many homeless families were registered when the Lincy Foundation started the construction work?” Ghazaryan told us that as of April 1, 2002, 8,948 families were registered, and today 7,185 families are registered. The number can vary, he says. “For example, yesterday three families got registered. They have been out of town. They presented a certificate that their house was destroyed and we were required to register them. We ask them, ‘Where have you been for 15 years?’ Some say they never thought that so many apartments would be built. Many people didn’t register even though they were in the city, but when the construction work expanded it gave them hope.” He explained that in order to start the Lincy project, it was necessary to clear the construction sites.

The homeless families who had been living in shacks on the sites have left, signing contracts with the Mayor’s Office to be given apartments ahead of turn. This arrangement made it possible to start the construction work.

Susanna Harutiunyan, a teacher at the Music School #1, told us that she had been called in to the Mayor’s Office recently and told to vacate the premises. “I will, why not? Give me an apartment and I’ll move out. They said - let’s sign a contract, you will rent an apartment and we will pay your rent for two years. OK, but who will pay the rent after that? They say that I don’t have the status of a homeless person, and that I have to go to court. Let the Mayor’s Office pay the fees and I will go to court. This housing problem is just killing us,” she said tiredly.

An ill-fated decision

In June 1999, Prime Minister Armen Darbinyan signed decision #432, according to which residents who lost their apartment in the earthquake zone would be provided with equivalent apartments. This decision was not unequivocally welcomed by the residents. “Fifteen years have passed since the earthquake, family compositions have changed. At the time of the earthquake there may have been five people in a family, and now there are twelve. According to that decision, we have to give them what they lost during the earthquake. It is unacceptable from a humane point of view. We turn them down, and they go to court. The mayor contested all such verdicts, but they were found valid by the court of appeals, and we had to recognize some of them as separate families,” says Garik Ghazaryan. The danger here is that using such logic, the reconstruction of the earthquake zone will never be considered complete.

Declare me homeless

“Declare me a separate family, and homeless,” “Recognize the fact of my residence at the current address,” - those are the most common demands rejected and returned by the Shirak Marz Court of First Instance. The suits deal with housing problems; when the respondent is the Mayor’s Office, the court usually throws them out with this wording: “The fabricated argument between the plaintiff and the mayor’s office is not under the jurisdiction of the court.” Edik Manukyan, the chairman of the Shirak court, the surge in these cases is connected to the fact that the recent construction projects have livened up the process of distributing apartments.

“Every one wants to take advantage of his or her right to housing. There are families in the earthquake zone who are registered to get apartments ahead of turn. This differentiation is related to the rights of certain citizens, and they are trying to get more apartments from the state by exploiting these rights. There are also citizens who split up into separate families because they hope to be declared homeless. And they argue that the court should not address the issue of whether or not they are registered, but should recognize the fact of their residence at a certain address.”

Manukyan said that the court has looked into many such cases in recent years. People who left Gyumri when their homes were destroyed in the earthquake have now reappeared demanding apartments. And many seek two separate apartments in the place of the one they lost.

“The mayor’s office does indeed create fabricated arguments, and than to avoid headaches seeks a court ruling. The argument is just for show, when you present some one with all the documents and than say no - this is indeed a fabricated argument,” Manukyan says.

The chairman informed us that as of July 17, 2003, the Court of First Instance had declared 95 families homeless and thus eligible for housing. And according to the Mayor’s Office, seven families had been registered after rulings by the court of appeals, eleven had signed contracts with the office, and three had received apartments through the USAID certification project. 

Garik Ghazaryan, the head of the city's housing department, told us that the Lincy Foundation is in the process of putting up 86 buildings in Gyumri, with space for 2,400 families. Another 1,608 families received housing thanks to USAID.

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