A Makeover for Yerevan

Armenia's capital city, Yerevan, is a testimony to its Soviet past. The city’s skyline is defined by a sea of grey edifices—five to nine-story apartment blocks—constructed to Soviet specifications. It’s a place that looks like it needs a makeover because since gaining independence in 1991, there’s been little visible maintenance to the city’s housing stock which has sharply deteriorated.

In less than 24 years, Armenia has privatized 96% of its housing stock—one of the fastest transformations in the world. Unfortunately, it has also caused many of the city’s current housing problems.

During the Soviet era, the state took care of building maintenance. With independence, that was transferred to the new generation of homeowners. It was a shock. When they got the right to own their own home, they also took on the task of upgrading and maintaining them. It was something they weren’t prepared for.

The real sticking point was who was responsible for the common areas in apartment blocks. Everyone was prepared to take care of their properties up to the door mat at the entrance, but almost no one seemed to be doing anything about maintaining and repairing shared spaces, changing the light bulbs, or ensuring broken windows were fixed.

In a few buildings, residents were prepared to go further and help with the maintenance of the property. Their philosophy was that if the building looked better for everybody, it would look better for them as well. After a while these like-minded people joined forces and began organizing themselves into homeowner’s associations (HOA).

Sargys Kyrkjyan is the head of "Zartonk" (which means 'revival' in Armenian), one such homeowner association. Sargys and his team of five people take care of a total of 23 buildings in Yerevan. They have a small office in one of the buildings where the tenants come to pay the building maintenance and garbage collection fees.

“We wanted to do more. We wanted to renovate the buildings, borrow from the banks, represent tenants and transform the buildings,” says Sargys. But current national laws limited our ambitions. We were frustrated because banks were very reluctant to lend money. “The two main issues were credit worthiness and lack of collateral,” says Seda Arzumanyan, Habitat for Humanity Armenia's resource development manager. “Even though they are legal entities, the homeowners associations do not own any assets or property and banks require personal guarantees of the tenants.”

That changed in 2014 when Habitat Armenia and Zartonk teamed up. In 2009, drawing on its experience in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Habitat Armenia developed a pilot project for maintenance of the common spaces that needed to be renovated.

Supported by Habitat Armenia, the homeowners association managed to secure loans and soon the common spaces were repaired. As part of the Habitat Armenia project, Zartonk applied for loans to renovate and upgrade two of its buildings and received loans from the bank and a 30-40% subsidy from the Yerevan municipality with a repayment period of three to five years. According to Seda, by the end of August 2015, 11 buildings have been financed and 533 families have benefited.

Gohar Bayatyan lives on the seventh floor in a one-bedroom flat in one of these Soviet-style buildings with her disabled mother. When she bought her flat in 1978 it was in bad condition. "It was grey and dirty," she says, “It was so cold you could feel it when you touched the door. Now, it's dry and you can feel the warmth.”

While the homeowners association fixed the open windows on each floor and renovated the previously unkempt corridors, there’s still more work to do in Gohar’s building. The roof is leaking and the walls have deteriorated. Gohar would love the walls to be repaired and insulated. She says the walls are so thin she can hear the birds knocking on the wall of the living room. “One day,” she says laughing, “they will knock a hole in the wall and become my tenants.”