For Armenian Immigrants, Housing Costs Pose a Hurdle

Boghos Koshkaryan’s hamrich (worry beads) get a lot of use.

At 99, he is still a refugee, one of the first of 10,000 or more expected to arrive this year in Los Angeles from Soviet Armenia, where he went from Syria after escaping the 1915 Armenian genocide in Turkey.

Now that he is in the “land of opportunity,” Koshkaryan lives with his son, daughter-in-law and two young grandsons in an old one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood. He speaks no English. And he has no idea how the family’s monthly welfare check of about $600 is stretched to provide food and clothing besides the $550-a-month rent.

“Housing is a big issue,” said Shoghig Ohanian, a caseworker at the 11-year-old Armenian Evangelical Social Service Center at 5250 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. “Rents are high and getting higher. The cheapest one-bedroom apartment in this area runs about $450 a month.”

Government help is limited almost entirely to a special welfare program for refugees that gives them a stipend for 18 months. Though eligible for Section 8, the federal rent subsidy, refugees are competing with others for it, and there is a lengthy wait. A week ago, Ohanian helped a man fill out a Section 8 application only to hear that his name would be on a waiting list for 10 years.

Roseann Emerzian Saliba, the center’s executive director, sighed. “We’re not able to do much, because there isn’t much affordable housing, but we do our best to get roommates together.”

Although there are Armenian communities in Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena and Montebello, the largest, known unofficially as “Little Armenia,” is in Hollywood. “It’s basically where the Soviet Armenians are coming,” Saliba said. “They live within an 8-mile radius of our center.”

Sarkis Ghazarian, director of social services at the Glendale office of the 78-year-old Armenian Relief Society, estimates that there are about 250,000 Armenians in Greater Los Angeles, with the largest concentration--50,000 to 60,000--in Hollywood.

They came in waves from several places, but the current inpouring, which began last August as an apparent byproduct of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and numbers about 2,000 to date, is expected to be the largest single influx of an ethnic refugee group to hit Los Angeles since the Vietnamese in the ‘70s.

As the influx grows, so will the housing difficulties because of the scarcity of low-cost apartments and government programs that promise immediate help.

Los Angeles County will release some funds in April to help social service agencies working with refugees, but these dollars won’t do much if anything to solve the housing problem.

Tom Garrison, assistant to the county’s coordinator for refugee affairs, said, “There was a 30% cut by Congress in past funds, so we’re not getting the additional monies to offset the larger numbers of people identified as refugees.”

Change of Administration

The California Legislature just passed legislation that authorizes $600 million in new state funds for low-income housing and shelter for the homeless. Of that, $150 million will go toward rehabbing substandard, some presently unusable existing housing.

But Marc Brown, a spokesman for the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, which backed the housing bills, acknowledged that “we’re probably looking at this time next year before even that money will hit the streets.”

He expects new housing programs at the federal level if a Democratic President is elected. But that, too, will take time.

Problems of housing the refugees rest at the moment with the social service agencies, the refugees’ families and the refugees themselves.

“We try to get them on a Section 8 list, but we don’t give them much hope, knowing that’s long term,” Ghazarian said, “so we tap Armenian newspapers, we knock on doors, and sometimes we hear of places through word of mouth.

“It’s a major problem for poor people across the board. There is not enough low-income housing.

“But finding it is even harder for refugees because they have few resources and nothing to fall back on financially. They can’t bring anything with them except their suitcases and their clothes.

“They can’t bring any money out of the Soviet Union. So they borrow from friends and family, who are mostly working people themselves.”

Armenian refugees have relatives here, because Gorbachev allowed the emigration under the Helsinki Accord, which enables families to be united.

The family of 99-year-old Koshkaryan is typical. He and his 36-year-old son Nerses have no blood relatives in Los Angeles, but Nerses’ wife of 10 years, Siranush Manukyan, 27, has a mother, father, sister and brother here whom she did not see for eight years.

So, she indicated through interpreter Nora Ashjian of Saliba’s center, yes, she’s happy she came to California. She’s happy despite leaving her spacious house in Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia. “I wanted to join my family,” she said. “I am very happy.”

Was Electronics Engineer

As for her husband, he’s happy too, he says, despite the hardships and uncertainties. He can’t get a job until he learns English, said Ashjian, who is teaching him and 257 other refugees in the center’s program. He was an electronics engineer in Armenia.

Worse off are the newly arrived immigrants, who are not even eligible for welfare during the first 30 days they are here. They arrive with $75 to $250 each, distributed by such organizations as Catholic Charities out of State Department funds, said Ghazarian.

“Say you have a family of four, and they have a total of $600. That’s not even enough to pay first and last months’ rent.”

Paying such high rent is also a new experience for these people, said Saliba.

Added to the difficulties of finding and paying for housing is the fact that many of these families have children, whom some landlords are reluctant to allow.

The need for Armenian senior housing is also critical, said Saliba, pointing out, “Our senior citizens live a long time”--refugees like Boghos Koshkaryan included.