Epress.am News from Armenia
Several residents of 3 Sisakyan St. in Yerevan in the coming days intend to appeal to the president's office then march to the Russian Embassy and surrender their Armenian passports, resident Lilit Kocharyan informed Epress.am, saying they made the decision to leave Armenia and seek asylum from Russia as a result of the municipality's incorrect allocation of apartments.
"First, we refused city hall; the next step will be to 'refuse' this country — let them be ashamed that they're playing games with people's lives. The building is collapsing day by day; worms and fleas are filling our apartments with the wastewater; all the walls are soaked with sewage. And it's not enough that we're living with a thousand diseases and infections, city hall says, wait till May 2015, [then] we’ll resolve the housing issues. They issued a document that residents living in the emergency block [the part of the building most damaged] need to be evacuated immediately; meanwhile, city hall provided apartments not to the residents of the marked block but to the residents from the other, opposite wing," Kocharyan said.
The disgruntled residents intend to ask the president's office to create an expert commission to prove that the apartments were allocated incorrectly.
Kocharyan said they are more angered by the approach of the employees of the administrative district, who advised the residents "to complain less; instead, go rent an apartment."
"I asked if I go to live in a rented flat for a year and a half, will you pay my rent? He says no. Or, if I left the house, from whom will I demand it?" she said.
Note, the building with 126 units has been considered a "level 4 emergency" building since 2003, and only recently has the municipality provided homes to 25 of the 104 families, telling the rest to wait till May 2015.