Condemned Homes in Armenian Capital
Five years after their neighbourhood was placed under demolition order, residents see little sign of progress.
Condemned Homes in Armenian Capital
Five years after their neighbourhood was placed under demolition order, residents see little sign of progress.
The Kond neighbourhood in the Armenian capital Yerevan looks picturesque, but residents say they would move out of their tumbledown homes if only they could. They can neither sell up and leave, nor spend money on modernising their homes, as the whole area is due to be cleared as part of an urban redevelopment scheme.
Homeowners are entitled to compensation in the shape of cash or a new house once their houses are flattened, but that is not happening. Compensation packages have been agreed for only 200 of the 900 or so homes in the five years since the area was scheduled for redevelopment.
The rest of the homes remain under threat of demolition, but owners will be stuck there until a decision has taken to go ahead with the work. They complain that the buildings – some of them hundreds of years old – lack basic amenities and are cold and damp, conditions they believe are causing high rates of pneumonia, tuberculosis and other diseases.
For more on this story, see Armenia: Legal Limbo for "Deleted" Yerevan District.
Mary Aleksanyan reports for the Human Rights in Armenia website.
