Details of Armenia’s housing subsidies project revealed
YEREVAN, 20 May. /ARKA/. Armenia will provide housing subsidies to forcibly displaced persons from Nagorno-Karabakh at no charge, Gayane Karagezyan, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs councillor, announced on Monday at a press conference.
Karagezyan noted that the beneficiaries of this project will be able to take additional loans from banks and will not be expected to return the money.
“We are talking about mortgage loans. The beneficiaries will need to borrow money from a bank, and the state budget will then cover their monthly payments for at least 10 years,” she explained.
The councillor noted that the project will have three stages. The first stage is scheduled to start in either June or July 2024 and will cover the families with at least three underaged children if the family is planning to buy real estate, and families with two children if such a family wants to build a house. “This stage will also involve families of the people who were killed [by the Azerbaijani aggression], families who lost their breadwinners, and families of disabled persons,” she said.
The second stage is scheduled to start in January 2026 and will cover families with at least two underaged children if the family is planning to buy real estate and families with one child if such a family wants to build a house.
“Stage three will start in January 2027 and will cover the rest of the families,” Karagezyan stressed.
The Armenian government approved a housing subsidies program for refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh on 16 May. It is expected that a total of 25,000 families will receive housing certificates and will be able to either buy real estate or build their own house. The government also announced it would help forcibly displaced individuals from Nagorno-Karabakh to pay back their bank loans.
The beneficiaries of the program need to be Armenian citizens. Each family member should have at least 12 square metres of living space. The price of housing cannot exceed 55 million drams.
Azerbaijan launched a full-scale invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh on 19-20 September 2023 using artillery, UAVs, and aircraft. On 28 September, Samvel Shahramanyan, the leader of the self-proclaimed state, signed a decree that put the republic out of existence starting 1 January 2024.
Roughly a week after the invasion, all but a few ethnic Armenians left Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian government reported registering a total of 115,000 refugees.
