Approximately 65,000 families are in need of housing in Armenia–about 26,000 are without permanent shelter. Many live in temporary structures, in most cases metal shipping containers, so-called domiks. Others live in former hotels, schools and schools that were converted to temporary housing. Along with those without permanent shelter are tens of thousands of families requiring better housing conditions.
The real estate market in Armenia has experienced dramatic growth in volume, and prices have consistently increased over the las
t five years. However, the majority of residential construction targets wealthy customers, and is not accessible even to the middle class.
The construction boom has driven a rapid boost in the Price Index for Construction with continuing trends making it extremely hard for low-income groups to build or renovate their homes.
Homelessness and housing poverty have grave material and psychological consequences for the families and society, which are in a complex cause and effect relationship and create a closed cycle of poverty.
- Adverse living conditions
- High heating costs
- Unsafe and unhealthy construction practices and lack of basic maintenance for years
- Increase of morbidity because of unhealthy conditions
- Increase of medical expenses
- Decrease of working capacity
- Difficulty of continuing education /low paying capacity/
- Psychological depression and loss of faith in future
- Social polarization
- Emigration (especially of youth)
At the same time, a lot of young men do not marry and families do not have children because of housing conditions, resulting in the low birth-rate of the village.
Several related families and multiple generations of one family often crowd into small homes. Not only does this situation threaten people’s physical health, but it contributes to a variety of psychological and family problems, including increased divorce rates.