One of the critical ideas of the pre-election program of the “Bright Armenia” party in the Yerevan Council of Elders elections is: “Condominiums spend most of the billions of drams collected from the residents of Yerevan on administrative salaries. We propose to abolish the condominiums and transfer the obligation of maintenance of the apartment building to the responsibility of the Yerevan Municipality.”
Meanwhile, the Deputy Mayor of Yerevan, Tigran Avinyan, who heads the pre-election list of “Civil Contract,” has already announced that they have developed a draft of a new law on condominiums, by which condominiums will be reorganized. They will receive funding from the municipality and the government.
Davit Khazhakyan, head of the pre-election list of the “Bright Armenia” party, the mayoral candidate, hosted on “Aravot” “Areresum” (“Confrontation”) program, said in this regard: “Since 2018-2019, there has already been talk about the agenda for improvement of condominiums. We presented our program provisions and insisted that this is how the reform should be implemented, but it was rejected by the city government and by the “My Step” bloc, which had a majority in the National Assembly then. Therefore, in this regard, whatever they do now is out of date. The authorities are trying to quickly achieve what they have not performed in the past 3-4 years, like a bad student.
However, there is also a programmatic difference because when they say that the condominiums should be reorganized, it still leaves open the scope of the capital overhaul (of roofs, elevators, porches, lighting, etc.). We understand the residents themselves cannot collect the investment required for the capital improvement of the building. On the one hand, what is composed today is wasted by condominiums; on the other hand, it is not enough. For that, we have another plan. Condominiums should be abolished in the first stage. It is a two-step process for us. Then, capital overhaul works should begin, and within five years, we will bring all apartment buildings in the city to such a state that current maintenance will be sufficient. And after that, by introducing the world’s best practices, we will be able to properly carry out current maintenance in the case of condominiums formed with the involvement of residents.”
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The other guest of the program, Tigran Khzmalyan, who heads the pre-election list of the European Party of Armenia in the elections of the Yerevan Council of Elders, the mayoral candidate, emphasized the need for inventory and audit. And there is such a provision in Yerevan’s development program of the European Party of Armenia. “First of all, an inventory of the immovable and movable property of the city economy will be carried out, ensuring the public’s transparency, reporting, and control of this process. As a result, the revealed illegalities and abuses, the consequences of illegal privatization and unscrupulous appropriation will be eliminated, and the property will be nationalized by judicial order based on the principle of public interest and social justice.
To the question of whether they will try to implement on a city scale what was proposed on the scale of the republic through the “transitional justice” system, Tigran Khzmalyan answered: “Certainly. In addition, nationalization will mean that we will only bring an international audit and put everything on an international auction. In other words, it is not a Bolshevik expropriation or dispossession. But we live in a city where black holes have appeared: the Hrazdan stadium or the former “Children’s World” department store right in the center of the city.” He assessed these examples as “unscrupulous” ownership.
Tigran Khzmalyan’s other proposal was no less remarkable, which he made when discussing greening the capital. “It is quite an easy solution and much unexpected. Yerevan has many cemeteries. Those cemeteries are desert now. If we provide irrigation water there at the municipality’s expense, we can quickly turn that desert into gardens within 3-5 years. We will have a forest, a garden in the cemeteries, which today are a desert.”
The entire conversation is in the video
Anna ISRAYELYAN
