Since November 2023, the government has been giving each refugee, who does not own a home or live in a government shelter in Armenia, 50,000 drams ($125) per month for rent and utility fees. The aid program has benefited the vast majority of some 105,000 Karabakh Armenians who fled their homeland after it was recaptured by Azerbaijan in September 2023. A lack of affordable housing remains one of the main problems facing them.
At its weekly session in Yerevan, the government approved a proposal by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to start essentially phasing out the housing scheme next year. It said that starting from April, the financial aid will be provided only to children, university or college students, pensioners and disabled persons forced to flee Karabakh.
The ministry estimates the total number of such refugees at around 54,000. The monthly allowance paid to them will be cut to 40,000 drams in April and to 30,000 drams in July.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said his government is thus encouraging working-age Karabakh Armenians to “start thinking about supporting their families through their own work.”
According to Labor Minister Narek Mkrtchian, more than 25,000 of them already have jobs or own businesses in Armenia. They are mainly the ones that will be excluded from the scheme, he told the cabinet meeting chaired by Pashinian.
ARMENIA - A refugee from Nagorno-Karabakh holds a child while standing next to a car upon their arrival in the border village of Kornidzor, September 26, 2023.
Many of those refugees complain that they earn barely enough to rent small apartments in Yerevan or surrounding areas that offer far more job opportunities than other parts of the country. Housing prices in and around the Armenian capital have soared in recent years.
In Mkrtchian’s words, another reason for the sharp cut in the financial aid is a five-year housing program launched by the government in June. It offers financial assistance to Karabakh Armenians willing to buy or build new homes in mainly rural areas. Each of them, including children, is 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 program does not seem to have attracted strong interest from refugees. Many of them say the sums offered by the government are not enough to buy or build even modest homes.
Exiled leaders of Karabakh have also criticized the program. One of them, Artak Beglarian, even accused Pashinian’s government in May of encouraging Karabakh Armenian to leave Armenia.