Homeless, Chamber Music Hall, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2005

Following on from running into a dead homeless person lying in the middle of the street on the way to kindergarten with my son last week, I ran into one that was thankfully breathing today. Actually, I’ve seen Samuel around my area for the past year now. Somewhat ironically, during the summer, he’s about the only person in this part of town that can be seen actually reading something in the nearby park now destroyed and infested by two tasteless cafes.

Anyway, as I mentioned in my previous post, many homeless don’t seem to want to go to the government-run homeless shelter situated in a really stupid and inaccessible place on or actually just outside the city limits. In most normal cities, homeless shelters are situated where the problem is most acute, especially when the police and social services don’t lift a finger to transport potential beneficiaries there.

Regardless, probably doesn’t matter as Samuel says he doesn’t need to go there. It’s not so cold yet and only his feet are freezing. That should make him feel better when his toes are amputated later, then.

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Homeless, Northern Avenue Construction Site, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2004

Well, not really, as a few of the homeless people I’ve photographed in the past two years died as well. Former actor and Karabakh war veteran Gor, for example, died a few weeks after taking the photo above despite the best efforts of myself, Hetq Online’s Edik Baghdasarian, and Yerkir Media TV. And Bash, another homeless person living in the park surrounding the Chamber Music Hall, died a few days after his 60th birthday.

Bash, whose real name is Samvel, died on 14 January 2005 . A week earlier while preparing the first draft of an article about him on the occasion of his birthday, I had written that this was definitely his last. My colleagues, however, suggested that to say such things about the living was inappropriate and so, I took the line out.

[…]

His body was languished. For eighteen days he hadn’t eaten anything. In hospital Bash couldn’t even sleep on a bed. Instead, he put the bedding on the floor and lay there. This person, who had slept on the ground for nine years, couldn’t even lie on a bed. “I am falling down from the bed on to the floor without even trying,” he said.

Yet, on his last day on earth he finally lay on what would become his death bed. Gasping and helpless without any energy at all, doctors tried to revive him so that they could operate on his frozen feet which needed amputation, but with no success.

Indeed, dozens of homeless people die on the streets of Yerevan in lieu of proper social and psychological services or even any international organization or local NGO that gives a damn. Regardless, today was when I saw my first corpse of a homeless person so perhaps I should have entitled this post “The First Dead Bomzh of Winter” or something.

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Homeless Shelter, Yerrord Gyugh, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online 2006

Last Saturday, Hetq Online’s Edik Baghdasarian, A1 Plus’ Karine Asatrian and myself visited Yerevan’s first ever homeless shelter. Our visit was particularly interesting given that for two winters running, we’ve been working on the issue of homelessness and pushing for a shelter to be opened. Despite the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor stating that there were only 13-15 homeless people living on the streets of the Armenian capital, the shelter already accomodates over 30. However, there are dozens of other “bomzh” that we know of, as well as others I’ve seen for the first time in the past week alone.

There were thirty-three homeless living in three rooms at this hostel in Yerrord Gyugh, while some had been “returned to their families”, like Anna, who was expecting a child. And two Kurds had been given permanent residence through the Yerevan office of the United Nations. According to Davit Shahbazyan, director of Hostel No. 1, they had managed to renovate three rooms, with support from Diasporan Armenians, in order to “save the homeless from the cold.”

51 million drams (approximately $113,000) had been allocated from the state budget for the construction of homeless shelters. But the results of the tender for the implementation of this project remained unclear. Shahbazyan presumed that the winner would be declared sometime this month, and the construction work would begin in April. Another 38 million drams had been allocated from the state budget to provide food for the homeless and pay the staff that care for them. An amount of 3,400 drams had been calculated per homeless person per day. The shelter was planned for 30 people, but the number of people there crossed that limit further with every passing day.

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Edik Baghdasarian (Hetq Online), Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Hetq Online has just published an update on the situation of Yerevan’s homeless this winter in English and Armenian. This in itself is interesting because after last year’s work on the problem, Edik Baghdasarian and I were only planning to do a short update given that the Ministry of Social Security had promised to open a shelter and had even taken money off an anonymous Diasporan donor to do so.

Half an hour later we were standing in the building earmarked to serve as a shelter and the donor arranged for construction workers to start repairs the very next day. Now, as a result, there are three large rooms that are ready for the first homeless beneficiaries.

However, it was only when the repairs were completed that the Minister of Labor and Social Security Aghvan Vardanyan admitted that it was not possible to move any homeless people to the shelter because he lacked the financial means to employ any staff.

The Ministry instead applied to the Mission Armenia NGO to provide temporary refuge for some of the homeless until May.

Thanks to the articles published last week on Hetq Online, and which were also reproduced in the traditional Armenian press, the Ministry of Social Services has finally opened up its homeless shelter, but is unwilling to transport anyone found living on the streets to the location just outside of Yerevan. Usually, homeless shelters are easily accessible, but we’re forgetting that this is Armenia.

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Last year Hetq Online conducted an investigation into the problem of people living on the streets of Yerevan, the Armenian capital. I’m avoiding the word “homeless” because homelessness comes in many shapes and forms, and in this case, Edik Baghdasaryan and I were concerned with what are known as ‘rough sleepers’ in the West, or here — rather derogatorily in Russian — as Bomzh. What we discovered was alarming.

City officials in Yerevan don’t see homelessness as a serious social problem, or as a threat. This is why there is no agency that deals with the homeless, and no one who can say how many homeless people there are in Yerevan. We met dozens of people who live on the streets ourselves. They told us they number from 500 to 1,000. And one homeless man, Robert Baghdasaryan, insisted: “There are thousands of people like us.”

[…]

There is nowhere in the capital where homeless people can go to spend the night. Twelve homeless people froze to death in the month of December alone. “Serzhik died right here where you’re sitting now,” a homeless man named Noro told us. Arsen and Toma died too. A homeless person from Karabakh who had fought in the Shahumian guerilla movement was found frozen to death 15 days ago near the GUM market.

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By Zarchka

It was early in December when Onnik told me that he was going to dedicate his New Year to photographing the homeless and spend time with them. That was when I felt that I could also help those people by asking everyone I knew to support them with clothes, shoes, blankets, etc. Then followed Hetq Online’s announcement that those who want to help can turn to them. After arranging everything with Hetq Online’s Editor-in-Chief Edik Baghdasaryan, we were able to bring that idea to life.

It cost me nothing to ask my friends, who were mainly volunteers with the Youth NGO Service for Peace to gather the necessary items. They were excited and got to work immediately. Hovik Barseghyan, the Chairman of the NGO, suggested that we also provide them with food, and we became even more inspired and engaged in collecting everything after watching the documentary produced by Yerkir Media and Edik Baghdasaryan.

Every friend, neighbor, and relative was told about this action. Some people thought we were doing a good job, while others simply thought that what we’d collect would only end up in the fire or being sold. Kind of jokingly I said that even that would be of some use as it would keep them warm although not in the way the were meant to. It was a test that all of us should pass, and I think that we managed to do that.

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Seryoja, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

This year’s special edition on homelessness in Yerevan by Edik Baghdasarian and Karine Asatryan of Hetq Online is now available. The investigation follows up a series of reports by Baghdasarian as well as a documentary film produced by Hetq Online and Yerkir Media TV last year.

Excerpts of this year’s update along with links to the full articles in Armenian and English can be found below.

Exactly one year ago Hetq Online published its special issue on homelessness in Yerevan. As a result of our research we discovered that approximately fifty homeless people in Yerevan die needlessly each year from the cold, and have done so for the past four years. There is no state body or even one single NGO that deals with the problem of ‘rough sleeping’ in Armenia. There is nobody that even attempts to address this issue during the cold winter months.

Each person that appears on the streets has their own story to tell. Many couldn’t survive the misfortunes of their past lives, some were abandoned by relatives, and others lost their property and homes in the most unlikely of circumstances. All found refuge on the streets.

Full Introduction: [ English ] [ Armenian ]

Seryoja, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Seryoja was born in 1948 in the village of Artsvaberd in the Shamshadin region of Armenia, but now lives with two others, Susan and Russian Sergey, in a dilapidated boiler room near the main train station in central Yerevan. “I was one-year-old when my father went to the army and came back with another woman. Then he took me to Baku,” he remembers.

“My father constantly beat me, and my stepmother argued with me,” he says. “I was trying not to go home, but missed my classes and was sent to juvenile prison. When I was released I didn’t return to my father, but instead ran away to live with my mother in Armenia. I worked at the railway station, and for a while was a conductor on a train.”

Full Article: [ English ] [ Armenian ]

Sergey, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

For the past two years Sergey has led the life of a vagrant in Yerevan, and sleeps wherever he can. In the summer he sleeps on the streets, and in winter under any shelter he can find. Now he lives with two other homeless people, Seryoja Vardazaryan and Susan, in a derelict boiler room in the yard of a building near the central train station.

“I’ve known Sergey for two years, ” says Servoja.” We live together and have became close friends. When the weather is warm we find work in construction, but when there is no work, like now, we collect bottles, empty bags and exchange them for money.”

Sergey says that people in Armenia treat him badly in the streets. They humiliate him when they see that he is homeless.

Full Article: [ English ] [ Armenian ]

Aram, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Aram was released from prison five years ago and worked in construction. He even rented a place to live, but during the last two years has slept on the streets. “My health is too bad to work in construction now,” he explains. “I collect bottles from rubbish tips instead, but not from people’s homes because they don’t treat me well.”

When the New Year comes, Aram’s business gets better because the number of bottles in rubbish bins increases. He says that the number of people that live like this in Yerevan is not small, and puts the number at more than a thousand.

Full Article: [ English ] [ Armenian ]

Ira and Svetlana, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

For Ira Kritina and Svetlana Golubkina, the New Year came a few days later on January 3 when their friend Vika visited with food and drinks. She didn’t come for a few hours, but agreed to spend the night with her two Russian friends in the open air underneath a polythene tent at the Komitas Pantheon. The women don’t remember when they fell asleep that night, but they do remember waking up screaming.

[…]

The homeless Russian women were accepted by the Centre, and were In fact the first homeless patients admitted this year even though the Ambulance Service brought four homeless patients to the Burns Centre during the first week of 2006 alone. According to Hovsep Shamakhyan, Head of the Burns Department, there were 19 cases of frostbite — predominently amongst the homeless — last winter. Six died.

Ira and Svetlana might be more fortunate, however, and have certainly received first aid and the opportunity to bathe. Their ragged and burned clothes went into the rubbish bin, and they’ll receive treatment for at least 22 days at the hospital. “What happens after that?“ jokes one doctor. “We can’t take them to our homes.”

Full Article: [ English ] [ Armenian ]

Yura and Nadezhda, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

This is already the second winter that Yura and his mother have spent living outside, although it’s difficult for him to explain how they came to find themselves in this predicament. ”We used to have an apartment in the 2nd District of Nork, but then it was confiscated,” he says. “Some people came and told us that we had no right to live there, and so we left the apartment.”

Yura says that the apartment in the Building #8 on Moldovakan street was sold by his sister who was registered there with her three children. Both he and his mother didn’t receive anything from the sale of the apartment even though his mother was one of the co-owners. “Life is difficult, and our situation is very complicated,” she says. Nadezhda used to work at a Chemical factory and has lived in Yerevan for 35 years.

Full Article: [ English ] [ Armenian ]

Vika, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Seryoja found his wife, Vika, in the Komitas Pantheon. A Russian by nationality, she was living there with two homeless friends, Svetlana and Ira, but moved to live with Seryoja near the “Vstrech” bridge in a tent near a dried up lake four months ago.

“We love each other,“ says Vika, who turned fifty long ago. Vika is divorced, but Seryoja doesn’t want to speak about his family. He only says that his wife and children have known how he lives for two years now. “There are plenty of people like us in Yerevan — more than one thousand,” he says.

Vadim, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Vadim’s mother died from a serous illness last March, but he continues to visit her friends, and sometimes takes them food. Although Vadim is not a homeless, he nonetheless also needs food and clothes. He lives with his uncle at #32 Smbat Zoravar Street. His uncle is over fifty, divorced, and hasn’t got any children of his own. His uncle’s former wife, Vika, is one of the Russian homeless in Yerevan.

Vadim’s mother was Russian, but his father is Armenian. He never knew his father because he left for Germany before his son was born. He does, however, know that his father’s name is Armen. Vadim doesn’t attend school and doesn’t know how to read and write. He says that he studied for a few years at Boarding school #2, but he has already forgotten what he learned there.

Vadim wants to attend school, but only if it is the type that he can return back home to in the evening. In the meantime, Vadim helps his uncle. “Sometimes I work,” he says, although he doesn‘t receive any allowance or assistance for his labor. Instead, he collects bottles from rubbish tips in order to buy bread and cigarettes.

Full Article: [ English ] [ Armenian ]

Homeless, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

None of the homeless in Yerevan will be able to spend even one night in a shelter originally intended for them despite the fact that 85 million drams was allocated for its construction in the 2006 budget. Nevertheless, Jemma Baghdasaryan, Head of the Department for the Disabled and Elderly in the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, says that “the Ministry is concerned about the problem of ‘these people.’”

“We had planned that the every needs of those appearing on the streets for whatever reason would be provided for,” she says when speaking about a Center that doesn’t even exist. Construction of the shelter should start in April or May, although towards the end of last year, the government said that it lacked the financial resources to do so.

Full Article [ English ] [ Armenian ]

For the full edition in Armenian and English, please access the Hetq Online web site. There are also links to some of the articles via photographs posted on the Hetq Online Photoblog. More images and links will be uploaded when I can find the time.

A six minute excerpt from last year’s documentary film made by Hetq’s Editor-in-Chief Edik Baghdasarian and Yerkir Media TV is also available for viewing online in Windows Media Format. Armenian and English versions of the full 28 minute broadcast quality documentary are available from Hetq Online in Yerevan.

There’s also another shorter excerpt from the documentary film below. It’s of Gor, another homeless person encountered during last year’s investigation and who unfortunately died three days after this video was shot.

Hetq Online is published every Monday by the Investigative Journalists of Armenia at http://www.hetq.am. Video excerpts © Hetq Online/Yerkir Media TV

Homeless in Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Today saw another journey out with Editor-in-Chief of Hetq Online, Edik Baghdasarian, and A1 Plus Reporter, Karine Asatryan, to take a second look at the problem of homelessness in Yerevan. Nobody knows the true number of people living on the streets of the Armenian capital, but what is interesting is the fact that the municipality refuses to admit that it’s a problem.

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Vika, Homeless in Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Edik Baghdasarian, Editor-in-Chief of Hetq Online, has just forwarded me an email from an American reader in response to our latest investigation into the problem of people living on the streets of Yerevan. Coincidently, the reader is researching the plight of the homeless in the U.S.

This is particularly poignant because problems such as poverty, corruption, human rights, and the lack of democracy exist everywhere. The only difference is in their severity and the power of local civil society to deal with the problem. I suppose it also depends on whether as individuals we give enough of a damn to attempt to push for change.

What a distressing article.

I am writing a book about homelessness in the United States titled “I Have a Name: Personal Stories of Homelessness in America,” and believe it or not our problems are not so different.

We do have shelters and homelessness task’s forces that is true yet we still have people living in train stations (When they aren’t chased away) and on the streets. Why doesn’t anyone who can change anything care?

Will we ever know why??

[…]

Thank you for posting such an important story.

Christine Moore ends her email by pointing us in the direction of her blog, Word Orgy, where she posts her “adventures of talking to the homeless.”

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The Hetq Online Photoblog has been uploaded with a few photos from the online publication’s ongoing investigation into homelessness in Yerevan.

Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

The first of Hetq Online’s renewed investigation into the situation of the homeless in Yerevan has been published in Armenian and English. A1 Plus journalist Karine Asatryan wrote the article on two Russian women living in the Komitas Pantheon for Hetq although a film crew from Yerkir Media TV accompanied us when the women were admitted into hospital yesterday with frostbite and burns.

For Ira Kritina and Svetlana Golubkina, the New Year came a few days later on January 3 when their friend Vika visited with food and drinks. She didn’t come for a few hours, but agreed to spend the night with her two Russian friends in the open air underneath a polythene tent at the Komitas Pantheon. The women don’t remember when they fell asleep that night, but they do remember waking up screaming.

“It was nearly 3 am and everything had burned. I managed to run out even though my foot was burnt. Everything we had, including our clothes and covers, were also burnt,” Ira says, four days after the incident. Her left hand and half of her face was also burnt and has started to inflame. “I apply oil on the wound,” she says, adding that none of them know who burned their “home” down. They saw no one.

Aram, one of the tenants living in a neighbouring building who visits them occasionally, thinks that the reason for the fire was an improperly extinguished cigarette. On 6 January — Christmas Day — huddled against one of the walls surrounding Komitas Park, the two women were lying half covered in polythene. The remains of their clothes and scraps of food lie strewn around.

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