GYUMRI’S HOMELESS: STILL WAITING FOR ADEQUATE HOUSING
Yeranuhi Soghoyan

201 0/02/15 | 16:02

Glendale Hills Fails to Deliver; New Apartments Need "Fixing"

The Glendale Hills construction company had promised to hand over
1,056 newly erected apartments to the government by the end of
December, 2009. Instead, not one apartment has yet to be transferred
to government control. The units were earmarked for those left homeless
by the 1988 Spitak earthquake.

It turns out that when Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan visited
the construction site on December 23 to officially take possession
of the apartments, he refused outright. The apartments just weren’t
"suitable" for those who had waited for twenty-one years for a place
to call their own.

After touring the site, President Sargsyan hastily convened a meeting
and put the construction firm on notice. Artashes Sargsyan, Deputy
Head of the Ministry of Urban Development’s National Urban Development
Inspectorate, confesses that the promise made by the experienced
construction company to hand over 1,000 apartments in just 7-8 months
was folly at best and one made by guys "wet behind the ears".

Glendale Hills took on more that it could chew

"If you had the occasion to meet with company management you’ll
surely have noticed that they’re young guys. They might have wanted
to do a good deed and build one thousand apartments in eight months,
but they got in over their heads. I believe they messed up in their
calculations. Most importantly, they failed to take Gyumri’s climatic
conditions into account," says Mr. Sargsyan. "First off, the work began
in May and seven months to finish the job was not enough. On top of
that, there were many inexperienced workers at the site since it was
a rush job. Now, all the problems are being fixed and our homeless
citizens can celebrate their house warming festivities come this May."

Mikayel Nersisyan, a lawyer by profession, was the managing foreman at
the Glendale Hills construction site in Gyumri. He’s now back at the
bar. Last month, a new foreman was brought in – Hovhannes Abrahamyan,
a builder by trade. Mr. Sargsyan from the ministry says the new man
is pretty experienced.

Mr. Sargsyan also says that the construction crews have changes as
well and that more experienced workers have been employed at the
job site. Sadly, experienced builders from the Gyumri area have not
been hired.

At the moment, there are 700-800 workers at the Glendale Hills site
in Gyumri.

Ministry claims all the problems will be "fixed"

Mr. Artashes Sargsyan, chosen by the Minister of Urban Development
(MUD) to monitor work at the construction site, says that the
apartments are being retiled and that all interior flaws registered
back in December are being corrected.

"Showers, with all the amenities and tiled, will be provided. And, of
course, heating. I can’t say if it will be an Ariston or Baksi heater,
but it will be one or the other," says Mr. Sargsyan. "Since they
originally set down laminate on wet cement, it’s beginning to bubble
up when they started to heat the apartments. Everything is being ripped
up and new flooring installed. In short, the shortcomings being voiced
by the people were indeed true. They’re all being taken care of."

According to Mr. Sargsyan’s calculations, had the apartments been
handed over to the homeless in their original state, back in December,
the new residents would have had to spent $3,000 on average to repair
the defects.

At the end of January, Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan and Deputy Prime
Minister Armen Gevorgyan toured the newly constructed residential
neighborhood, ostensibly, according to Mr. Sargsyan, to check out
a few sample "spruced up" units and to then direct the builders
to continue in the same vein. At the same time the "HaySeismShin"
testing form had also started to conducts tests as to the structural
durability of the buildings. The inspectors wanted to see just how
much reinforced concrete had been poured in the support pillars.

Apartment size – will larger families get larger units?

Given that one of the concerns of potential new residents dealt with
the actual living space of the apartments, Hetq made a few inquiries
with the Ministry of Urban Development (MUD). It replied that the
actual living space of the newly constructed apartments was formulated
according to RoA Law 1402, passed on November 26, 2009. The minimum
and maximum surface area of the multi-unit buildings, as defined in
the preliminary planning documents, were based on the number of rooms
in each unit as follows:

1 room apartment: 40 – 47 square meters 2 room apartment: 52 – 59
" " 3 room apartment: 65 – 70 " " 4 room apartment: 77 – 80 "
" 5 room apartment: 90 – 110 " "

Apartments being constructed by Glendale Hills in Building #1 in
the Moush-2 neighborhood of Gyumri include the following sizes:
1 room apartments – 40, 42, 47 square meters; 2 room apartments –
54 and 56; 3 room apartments – 66 and 67. Kitchen space is included
in these figures.

MUD claims that these apartments sizes correspond to units built in
Gyumri prior to the Glendale Hills project. Here, we should take a
look back to the multi-unit buildings constructed in 2003-2004 with
the same budget. In these buildings, 2 room units measured 72 square
meters and 3 room units, 99 square meters.

It turns out that it is possible to build larger, heated units with
showers with the same amount of money.

MUD also said that according to a provision in the same Government Law
1402, it stipulates that where there are different sized apartments,
the larger ones should be allocated to those families with more
members.

These newly constructed apartments are being allocated to the homeless
based on a lottery system. And, according to the way the lottery
is devised, larger families are not assured of getting the larger
apartment, whether one, two, or however many rooms. The lottery ticket
a person draws doesn’t specify how large the actual apartment is.

MUD responded by saying that there were more than 1,000 families, with
three or more members, on the waiting list for a one room apartment.

Thus, it was been decided to allocate the 40-42 square meter units
to families of two or less and the 47 square meter units to families
of three or more.

In its reply, the MUD points out that both Minister Vardanyan and the
Deputy Minister have made several on-site inspections of the work
being conducted at Gyumri and have organized consultative meetings
to come up with solutions to existing problems.

If this is the case, why weren’t the faulty construction measures
halted in the first place? Or didn’t the official inspectors notice
that flooring was being installed on wet concrete and frozen plaster
walls were being painted?

What good are inspectors who don’t know what to look for or close
their eyes when they see something that isn’t right?