Lending partnerships offer hand up to families

The next-door neighbor of the mayor of Sardarabat was halfway finished building his modest house when Armenia’s economy collapsed in the early 1990s.

“I’m optimistic he’s going to be one of the first applications,” said Mayor Babken Vardanyan, referring to a new lending partnership for low-income families that Habitat for Humanity, Yerevan-based First Mortgage Company (FMC) and the Dutch International Guarantees for Housing (DIGH) have launched in his 6,400-population town.

More than 1,200 families in need in Sardarabat, Nor Armivir, Mrgashat – all small towns in the Armivir province northwest of Yerevan and near the Turkish border – and the city of Artashat in the Ararat province −are expected to be served by the pioneering effort, which offers no-profit, home-improvement loans to qualified families earning 20 percent to 65 percent of the median income.

“These are families who have no access to housing credit,” said First Mortgage CEO David Atanessian, who administers the $3.7 million loan pool. “Or if they can find a mortgage loan, the interest rate is too high, the length of the loan too short, and the fees too much for such a loan to be affordable.”

In the Armivir province, families like the mayor’s neighbor have lived years in incomplete or indecent houses because they can’t afford to save the cash to buy necessary building materials all at one time.

Narine Avetissyan of the Nor Armivir village understands perfectly the importance of housing credit. With her teacher’s salary and her husband’s pension as a disabled police officer, her family can comfortably afford a Habitat-FMC-DIGH home-improvement loan to finally finish their half-built house.

The first family to receive a loan under the program this summer, she and her husband are looking forward to substantially completing their home before this winter’s bitter cold.

“It is a blessing,” Narine said. As a mother and a educator, she added, she is especially grateful for a simple, warm home where her children’s health will be safeguarded and where they can study in comfort.

Separately, Habitat for Humanity has signed an agreement to work with another NGO to possibly offer small loans for housing to families who earn less than those the Habitat-FMC-DIGH partnership targets. Now under development, the project is expected to launch next year.

“Everybody deserves a simple, decent place to live, and these partnerships have the potential to help many more low–income families throughout Armenia,” Lucija Popovska, Habitat for Humanity Europe and Central Asia’s program director, said.