A number of changes have been made in the state support program for providing housing for displaced families from Karabakh, the purpose of which is to improve the existing conditions and help more families benefit. “Armenpress”At the press conference held in the press hall of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs of the Republic of Armenia, Gayane Gharagyozyan, the advisor coordinating individual functions of the structural divisions of the RA Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, stated that the changes concern both beneficiaries and interdepartmental work.
“The first amendment applies to divorced families. Problems arose when minor children were in the care of one parent and the other parent applied for the program. Now, with the new regulations, the procedure is as follows: a divorced person, who does not have minor children under his care, can apply separately to the program to get a certificate,” said Gayane Gharagyozyan. The need for this change comes from the divorced families themselves, the state has stepped in to improve the conditions.
The next change concerns those families whose application was rejected based on the lack of data on a young child in the family. In other words, the data is not available in the database of the displaced. The reasons are different, maybe the operator who entered the data failed, or the parent did not provide the data, etc. In any case, there was a problem and a solution was needed. As a result, it was decided that if as of September 19, 2023, the child has not turned 6 years old and the family’s application to use the housing program is rejected solely on the basis of the absence of the child’s data, then with the new amendment, the application of that family will no longer be rejected due to the absence of the child’s data in the database.
“We have made another important change, which refers to the positive balance of the amount provided by the certificate and the spending directions. As we know, in the case of purchasing an apartment with a certificate, if there is a positive monetary balance, the citizen could apply for a repair loan. And it could be done once. Now, according to the new procedure, the citizens can apply for the second time to use the positive balance, if necessary,” said the representative of the ministry, adding that the beneficiaries can also use the positive balance for the reconstruction of individual residential houses and the construction of the area near the house.
Beneficiaries often complain that the amount given by the certificate is not enough to solve the issue of the apartment, what kind of positive balance can we talk about? Gayane Gharagyozyan mentioned that there are beneficiaries who took advantage of this opportunity.
“Perhaps we are talking about the cases where the family is small and they want to buy a house in Yerevan, but we have families who bought a house in the marzes and yes, there is also a positive balance of money. According to the latest data, I can say that we have 1014 families who have a positive cash balance, 657 of them have already used that positive balance for repairs, and 680 have used it to buy furniture and household appliances,” said Gayane Gharagyozyan.
According to the next amendment, the family members can combine their own certificates with the family’s certificate. In this case, the support amount can be used as a positive balance in the directions and limits set by the program. The provided financial assistance cannot be prohibited, confiscated or offset against other obligations of the beneficiary.
So far, 6,911 families have received certificates, of which 3,254 have already implemented them. Citizens have bought apartments in all marzes of the republic. First is Kotayk, then Armavir, followed by Ararat, Yerevan, Lori.
Within the framework of the program, the state provides 5 million drams to 1 family member, if the apartment or house is purchased in 252 settlements defined by the government, and not all of them are border and rural. It is 3 million drams per person in Yerevan, 4 million drams in all other areas. The provided certificates are valid until December 30, 2028 inclusive, and the program can be applied for until December 31, 2027.
