U.S. Foreign Assistance Makes a Difference
By Dianne Tsitsos
Imagine living in a country where you could not own property: you could
not buy or sell a home or leave it to your children; you could not own
the land you farmed; you could not own the property on which you did business.
Indeed, you would have a very hard time doing any kind of business at
all, as there would be no banking system as we know it, no possibility
of getting a mortgage or other credit, no judicial system to enforce a
contract. This was the situation confronting the republics of the former
Soviet Union when the USSR broke up over a decade ago.
The former Soviet Republic of Armenia, a tiny country, landlocked and
surrounded by sometimes hostile neighbors like Turkey and Azerbaijan,
faced all of these problems and more. In 1988, a terrible earthquake had
devastated sections of the country, and the subsequent fall of the Soviet
Union meant that virtually no rebuilding had occurred since that time.
Ten years later, over 26,000 households were still living in “temporary”
shacks, without heat, electricity, or running water.
 |
| Gyumri Earthquake victim who
now who has shelter due to USAID’s Earthquake Zone Housing
voucher program. |
However, the Armenians were not facing their problems all alone. They
had many friends in the United States. The Armenian-American community
was determined to see that their ancestral home, which had suffered so
much over the centuries, would receive strong support from the United
States now that Armenia had finally achieved independence. They gave millions
of their own money to help. And they urged the U.S. government to help,
too, through a generous foreign assistance program. The U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) administers this assistance in Armenia
and in many other countries.
In 1998, I became the director of the USAID mission to Armenia. I had
just spent two years as deputy director of the USAID office in Almaty,
Kazakhstan, working in five countries of Central Asia, and I was eager
for the opportunity to run my own mission.
The challenge of solving the housing problems of thousands of earthquake
victims a decade after the earthquake, however, was much more difficult
than I had expected.
In the years since independence, Armenia had made considerable progress
in changing its laws to permit private property and create a market economy.
These changes were not easy. Citizens were suffering from the loss of
the Communist cradle-to-grave “social safety net” that guaranteed
them jobs, education for their children, health care, pensions, and even
vacations. Now there was little likelihood of anything but hardship.
The vague concepts of “freedom” and “democracy”
were scant compensation for many Armenians who were not able to feed their
families. So it took some courage for Armenian officials and politicians
to push forward with the reforms needed to create a free and competitive
market and a democratic political system.
USAID programs helped guide the Armenians to put in place the laws and
regulations that would enable families to buy and sell homes and to have
a secure title to their land. Laws alone, though, were not enough. The
earthquake victims had lost everything, and the building of a free market
and private businesses had not yet produced the jobs that would allow
them to afford to buy their own housing. Consequently, a portion of the
United States’ foreign aid for Armenia was set aside to provide
housing for them.
At first, Armenian President Robert Kocharian urged us to build new housing
for the victims. We knew, however, that building new housing would cost
so much that not very many families would be helped. So we proposed to
use housing vouchers to enable the families to buy vacant housing already
available on the local market. It was not as attractive an idea as building
shiny new units, but President Kocharian quickly saw that helping more
families move into decent permanent housing was more important, and he
became a strong advocate of the project.
We worked hard to put in place a system that would ensure that the funding
for the vouchers reached the families in need, and that those families
would have the help they needed to find and negotiate for decent housing.
We also had to be careful that people who had housing units to sell were
treated fairly and had other places to move to. We did not want our program
to entice other needy people to sell their homes in order to raise cash
for immediate needs.
We used some of the project money to hire an American company experienced
in these issues to design and execute the project. The local government
in Armenia, having rid itself of a corrupt official responsible for misappropriating
other donor funds intended for the earthquake victims, was competent and
honest. Its cooperation was crucial to the success of the housing program.
The highlight for me came when I had the honor of standing with President
Kocharian and American Ambassador to Armenia Michael Lemmon to distribute
the first housing vouchers to the earthquake victims. The families came
dressed in their best, with children and grandparents, aunts and uncles,
all thrilled to be meeting their president, but also knowing that the
housing vouchers they were receiving came to them from the people of the
United States.
Some smiled, some giggled, and some cried, as they received the pieces
of paper that meant escape from the cold, drafty, ramshackle shelters
they had endured for over 10 years. But those pieces of paper represented
more than decent housing to the 4,000 families we were eventually able
to help; they also represented a commitment by the Armenian government
to a free market, built on the idea that private property ownership is
the foundation for a better life. Without the support of the United States,
though, that commitment might not have been put into practice. That support
was not just money; it was know-how and ingenuity.
If you’re over 50 like me, you could not have imagined the end
of the Cold War: the Bomb, the Iron Curtain, air raid shelters and drills…
Today, despite all the problems remaining, Russia and its former republics
are allies in the war against terrorism.
The U.S. foreign aid program, paid for with less than 1 percent of the
federal budget, helped make that happen by supporting the programs that
have gradually brought the countries of the former USSR closer in their
governance and policies to western democracies. In my opinion it’s
money well spent.
Dianne Tsitsos is a career foreign service officer with
the U. S. Agency for International Development. She has served in Morocco,
Sri Lanka, Central America, Central Asia, and Armenia and is currently
assigned to the Europe and Eurasia Bureau in USAID/Washington.
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