Donors/Partners: Individual Donors & UNHCR

Implementing Organization: Aleppo-NGO

Project Duration: Ongoing

Major Goal: To provide housing solutions to vulnerable Syrian refugee families in Armenia.

Description: The project is designed to provide humanitarian emergency housing for the most vulnerable Syrian families who meet certain criteria within the project. Securing affordable housing is one of the major challenges faced by Syrian refugees in Armenia. Within the framework of the project, Aleppo-NGO finds benefactors to purchase modest apartments, ranging from $15,000 to $40,000 USD each, and allocates them to Syrian refugee families rent-free. Aleppo-NGO carries out all the legal paperwork related to the purchase of these apartments which are owned by the individual donors and used by the refugees for a predetermined time period. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) provides furniture for the obtained apartments in accordance with the official partnership agreement between Aleppo-NGO and UNHCR.

Scheme 1: The purchased apartments are provided to extremely vulnerable Syrian refugee families free of charge on a short-term (6-12 months), mid-term (up to 36 months), or long-term (up to 60 months) basis to support their gradual integration in the Republic of Armenia.

Scheme 2: The purchased apartments are provided to Syrian refugee families using a rent-to-buy financial scheme where the tenant (Syrian refugee family) deposits a rental fee in a designated bank account for a sustainable period of time (at least 12 months and up to 60 months). After the rental agreement expires, the Syrian refugee family recovers the entire rental fee they had paid for 12-60 months to use as capital investment (down-payment) to purchase the “Host a Family” apartment they were living if the benefactor agrees to sell the apartment or use the accrued funds as a down payment for the purchase of another apartment in Armenia.

Thanks to the “Host a Family” project’s benefactors (the Chemberjyan, Melkonyan, Hovhannisyan and Potugyan families), ten Syrian families have been provided with apartments in Yerevan and three of those live in the city of Spitak in the Lori province of Armenia.

In Spitak, the “Host a Family” project was implemented thanks to a cooperation with the  and the Melkonyan family.

The Syrian families in Spitak are engaged in agricultural work. They breed domestic animals, cultivate the land they received, and use the products they produce to sustain normalcy in their everyday life. These families do not pay for housing or utilities.