For the past four years, Ashot and Marieta and their six children have been living in a cramped one room in a dormitory in Hrazdan.

Marieta is expecting another child in a few weeks. She doesn’t know how they will continue to cope.

The family’s only furniture consists of two beds, which take up most of the room, a small table and a TV. When you enter, there’s hardly any room to move around.

When I visited, I noticed that there weren’t any residents on the dorm’s second floor. I knocked on all the doors and no one answered.

Ashot and Marieta say they have filed numerous requests for additional space, but to no avail. They’ve even wrote to President Sargsyan about their situation.

"They answered that we should apply to the Regional Authority (Marzpetaran), but we’ve already done so. They had sent us to the Hrazdan Municipality. They promised to help us out but nothing has happened," Marieta says.

What the municipality has done is to send four of the kids to a boarding school in Byureghavan.

Marieta says she misses her children but at least they’re now living in normal conditions.

"We visit them when we have enough money for the trip," she tells me.

The local parish priest sends the family a daily meal, for which the family is thankful.

Ashot, who suffers from epilepsy, says he gets construction work every few days and can make about 3-4,000 AMD ($10) a day. The family’s main income is the 61,000 monthly AMD ($150) in child assistance.

Ashot says that the municipality promised to send someone to check the dormitory for empty rooms.

"So far, no one has come to inspect the place. There are many empty rooms here," he says.

Shota Khachatryan, from the municipality’s housing stock department, told Hetq that the dorm is private property and that management must allocate additional rooms. He also said that there weren’t any free rooms to allocate.

When I told him about the empty rooms on the second floor, Khachatryan replied that they belong to former company employees who have padlocked the rooms and have left the area.

I then asked if it was possible to unlock one of the empty rooms and allocate it to the family.

"Let them come to my office and we’ll discuss the matter. We would have to reach an agreement with the owners. They should come with a specific number of an empty room. I’ll then make a proposal to the owners."