The government approved on Thursday as five-year program of financial assistance to refugees willing to buy or build new homes in mainly rural areas. Most refugees have until now prefered to live villages and towns close to Yerevan because finding a job there is much easier than in other parts of the country.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian touted the “extensive program” during a weekly session of his cabinet. Citing “the most conservative estimates,” one of his deputies, Tigran Khachatrian, said the total amount of such funding could reach as much as 800 billion drams ($2 billion) by the end of 2029.
The primary beneficiaries of the program are Karabakh Armenian families that have at least three children or a disabled member or lost a loved one during the conflict with Azerbaijan. Each of these refugees will be eligible for between 2 million and 5 million drams ($5,000-$13,000) in government grants that could only be used for meeting their housing needs.
The largest amount of money is to be paid to families agreeing to acquire new homes in one of 240 mostly rural and remote settlements listed by the government. Refugees opting for homes in a smaller number of other settlements would be paid 4 million drams each. Karabakh Armenians that have taken mortgage loans will be offered only 2 million drams.
Zina Najarian, a 64-year-old woman from Stepanakert, and four other members of her family rent a rundown two-bedroom house in Zoravan, a village 30 kilometers north of Yerevan, paying its owner 100,000 drams ($255) per month. The housing program makes them eligible for 15 million drams in total.
In Najarian’s words, this is nowhere near enough to buy or construct a home in Zoravan. A small plot of land there alone costs 25 million drams, she said.
Najarian as well as other ordinary refugees, who did not want to be identified, are therefore skeptical about the impact of the housing scheme touted by Pashinian. Their skepticism is shared by Karabakh’s political leaders and public figures exiled in Armenia.
Hayk Khanumian, a former Karabakh minister, insisted on Friday that the scheme will not address one of the most acute problems facing the more than 100,000 refugees. It could only push up housing prices even in remote villages, he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. Khanumian complained that the government rejected his and like-minded Karabakh Armenians’ proposal to finance instead the construction of new houses in Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province closest to depopulated Karabakh.
Artak Beglarian, Karabakh’s former premier and human rights ombudsman, was even more critical, accusing Pashinian’s government of encouraging Karabakh Armenian to leave Armenia.
“It is obvious that the Armenian government makes decisions regarding the people of Artsakh without a strategy, or more precisely, there are a number of grounds to claim that its existing strategy is to promote emigration and close Artsakh's page once and for all,” Beglarian charged in a Facebook post.
Beglarian and other prominent Karabakh figures rallied several hundred refugees in Yerevan in March to protest against the initial, less generous version of the program. The government amended it in the following weeks. Beglarian dismissed the changes “secretly” made in the scheme, saying that the government refused to consult with any genuine representatives of the Karabakh Armenians.
The government will launch the new scheme in addition to paying each refugee, who does not own a home or does not live in a government shelter, 50,000 drams ($125) per month for rent and utility fees. That aid program was launched last November and extended in March.