See: Gyumri Diary: 21 Years after the Earthquake People Still Waiting for Adequate Housing, Part 1

It’s December 19 and I once again visit Gyumri’s Moush #2 neighborhood. I start to talk to a construction worker on his break. The young man says that he hails from Yerevan and that his group has been working on the building site for the past three days.

(We withhold the worker’s name out of fear that he might be dismissed otherwise) He says that before coming to Gyumri, his crew had been working in Russia. I ask him about the smoke rising from the tops of the buildings. He says that stoves are being lit inside to dry the plastered walls. The company hires guys to stay up all night and watch over the stoves. “It doesn’t make a difference,” he says, “the walls are going to crack anyway since they painted over wet plaster.” Inside, I come across some young local guys from Gyumri working on the building. They tell me that they wouldn’t live in any of these apartments even if they got one for free. When I asked why, one of the workers said, “Just look at how the place was constructed. Paint over wet plaster, laminate flooring over wet concrete, small rooms. Would you want to live here? Outside it’s nicely painted in warm colors and all, but inside it’s a different story. Hey, you’re probably on the list to get an apartment, right? No wonder you’re so inquisitive.”

Only the guys from Leninakan are doing decent work

The Yerevan worker then let me in on a little secret. “Let me tell you something. There are workers here from all over the place. To be honest with you, it’s only the guys from Leninakan who are doing a decent day’s work. It’s because they saw the earthquake with their own eyes. They know what might happen again and they’re afraid,” he says and adds that there are many working on the site who don’t have any experience in construction. Entering a building opposite the construction site, I knock on one of the apartment doors and ask if I might take a look around. A woman of about fifty invites me inside. I explain that I’m a reporter and that I’d really like to take some photos of the new housing site being constructed by the Glendale Hills company from her balcony.

“No problem. Take as many pictures as you want. I know that they don’t let anyone inside. The other day a guy came with a camera and he had to place it high up on a wall to take some shots,” says Mrs. Hasmik as she opens the doors to the balcony. The hospitable woman then starts to praise the two new buildings going up opposite her apartment. “We saw them lay the foundation and all. The cement was poured in very properly. You know that only the best craftsmen were working on those buildings. Whoever is lucky enough to get a place in one of those buildings won’t be sorry,” Mrs. Hasmik says with a smile. “They did quality work there, but those other buildings. My God, the stories you hear.”

It’s a panel building but at least we have balconies

Her husband, who works in one of the construction firms in Gyumri, says that smoke has been seen rising from the roofs of the buildings for the past ten days, round the clock. Both husband and wife claimed that no tiles were being installed in the bathrooms. New tenants would get the apartments unfinished. The man, who visits the site often on work-related matters, says that there’s a shortage of experienced professionals working at the site and that others have left, not agreeing to the low pay rates offered by Glendale Hills. He adds that many of the younger workers at the site are getting on the job training working in the buildings. “It’s true that ours is a panel-type building built by the Russians after the earthquake, but at least it has a balcony,” Mrs. Hasmik adds, “The apartment has 3 rooms and each has a balcony. Where will those families hang their wash or store their sack of potatoes. There was a guy on the T.V who said that after they got their apartment they would remodel the place.” Now while it’s true that these might be regarded as particularly Armenian concerns, it must be remembered that the new Ani and Moush neighborhoods built by the still functioning Soviet Union, immediately after the earthquake, featured apartments that took such needs into consideration. True, the buildings were panel-construction and hard to heat in the winter but a solution for this was found as well. The giant boiler plant located on the road leading to the village of Mayisian would take care of heating the new residential buildings.

Glendale Hills – “Not apartments but residential space”

In contrast, Glendale Hills states that they aren’t furnishing “apartments” to those people who’ve been living in temporary housing for the past twenty one years, but rather “residential space”, bereft of any furnishings, heating systems or even a shower. In a word - just four walls. On the day of the apartment lottery, there was a resident from the ruined dormitory in the hall. She was an elderly woman who eked out a meager living by selling whatever bits and pieces she could rummage from the streets of Gyumri. I wondered if such a woman would ever be able to purchase and install bathroom tiles, a bath tub; let alone kitchen furnishings and appliances. Did this woman, who roamed the streets in worn men’s shoes, realize that the apartment she might receive would be an empty shell?

The 4,000 remaining homeless families in Gyumri are the poorest of the lot and haven’t been able to resolve their housing problem on their own. For years they have been waiting for the government to step in. Many had high hopes once all this new construction was launched in 2009. However, parallel to the increase in construction, there was also an increase in talk linked to the poor quality of that construction. “There are many things that just can’t be proven. For instance, was cement used to fill in the support beams or was construction waste substituted? There’s a special monitoring machine that can tell you such things. Then too, there’s no plaster under the exterior wall tiles; just some gooey substance. Come springtime, all those other shortcomings will surface. The frozen plaster will start to give way,” warned Albert Kahayan, a resident of the neighborhood near the bus depot. “But I don’t think that anyone will want to move into these apartments without any heat before May. You should come back and see what happens if they do.”

December 23 – Where’s the president?

But before May rolls around there was December 23 to contend with. It’s the date when the construction company was supposed to hand over 1,056 apartments to the government. The president was scheduled to present the keys of new apartments to 96 pre-qualified families. There was to be cheers and rounds of applause, and naturally tears of joy on the part of the lucky families. What happened on the date was something else entirely. At around 11 am, a noisy ruckus was to be seen in the vicinity of the new residential district. A young man, evidently besides himself, was screaming and pointing to the crowd of people near the minivans. “Who’s the jerk who brought these people here? Take them back. Tell them to go to the theater building at 5 pm. There’s no one here to give them any keys.” The people, who had been brought to the Moush neighborhood in the minivans, looked around in confusion and despair. On December 19, during the lottery that took place at the drama theater, the urban construction minister had told the crowd that on December 23 the president himself would hand over the keys to the new lucky apartment owners. Instead, the new owners were being told, quite rudely, to get lost. We tried to find out what had happened. Evidently, the president had no intention of handing over any keys. In fact, his entourage went to Lori instead. The young man shouting out orders to remove the new apartment owners was evidently an employee of the construction firm who had been just informed in the change of itinerary and wasn’t too pleased.

They also tried to remove the members of the press who had gathered at the site for the key presentation ceremony. It didn’t work. Two company staffers approached the reporters and told us to leave the site since they had to wash down the street and that we were in the way. We had to explain to them that we lived in a free country and that we could stand in the mud if we wanted. Besides, we pointed out; the street didn’t belong to Glendale Hills. The next two hours saw some interesting developments. Before the president was to make an appearance, it was decided to dig up and patch a stretch of road that had just been paved the day before. An expression of remorse soon was seen on the face of the man responsible for paving the road. He said that the company had just completed paving the road leading to the new neighborhood in the wee hours of night on December 22.

They forced us to do a rush job

“We didn’t want to work like that. But they told us this is how it had to be done. We’ve been working under this deadline for the past ten days. We’ve probably paves around 22,000 square meters of road. Come spring, we’ll have to come back and lay down another layer of asphalt anyway,” he told me with a tone of anxiety in his voice, “It’s just a shame that we used all this asphalt and that it won’t last till the spring.” It was only after the visit of President Sargsyan  to the new residential district on December 23, that it became possible to understand what the urban development ministry and the contractor were preparing to hand over to the homeless families. From the beginning of 2009 all the way to December 5, representatives of Glendale Hills  were constantly talking about how they were obliged to hand over so many apartments within the agreed to deadline. (I don’t mention the number of apartments or the deadline here since they were changed countless times) Company reps also pointed out that the apartments were to be unfurnished, even without shower facilities, for these too were “furnishings” and the contract they signed with the client, in this case the government, included no such provision.

Minister promises showers and toilets

On December 19, Minister of Urban Development Vardan Vardanyan, told reporters in Gyumri that the apartments would indeed be fitted with shower facilities and that the statements made by the contractor to the contrary were merely the result of a misunderstanding. In any case, the six apartments that President Sargsyan toured on December 23 were outfitted with a toilet, a linoleum floor and even a sink in the kitchen. The strong smell of paint wafting through the apartments was proof that the work crews had done a rush job which they finished not a day before. Even President Sargsyan noticed what had happened and wasn’t pleased about the results.

I remember the heroine in the film showed at the seminar I attended. In fact, she doesn’t accept the prize for her award-winning photo. Perhaps it’s hard to accept to go on living with the thought that the photo in questions was paid for in blood. Now, I can categorically state that those “construction heroes” of the Soviet Union did not once consider that the awards and accolades bestowed them would also one day lead to a very terrible price being paid.