one time, this meant that housing quality varied by location.<sup>44</sup> Furthermore, since land was not recycled for new uses, the city grew as rings of similar quality housing were added at one time.

Economic changes during the transition years meant major changes in the fortunes of cities and their residents. Transition countries began housing reform by privatizing housing, generally by simple giveaway schemes. Housing privatization programs created winners and losers depending on where people happened to be living at the beginning of transition. Those in well located, larger units in places with a sound economic basis received far more valuable assets than did residents of collapsing mono-industrial cities or remote and underserved suburbs. It is noteworthy that since most privatization programs have not yet closed, households living in social housing who have the right to privatize their units should also be considered winners or losers since they cannot be evicted, can easily privatize and sell, and also often sublet units on the private markets.

# **Box 4.5.  Housing as a coping mechanism in Armenia and Moldova**

In Armenia, Rosa, single mother of a six year-old son, sold the conveniently located two-room apartment where she had grown up for a one room apartment in a poor, badly serviced distant suburb. She was a pediatrician, but after moving into the distant suburb she also had to change her job, since she could not afford bus fare from her new apartment to her old job.

An old lady sold her apartment at the center of Yerevan, for cash to a rich person, with the agreement that she could live in it until her death.

Source: When the Things Fall Apart – WB 2002

***

Renting out even modest apartments, rooms -- or sometimes, just a bed -- forms an important source of income in urban settings in Moldova. The luckiest are those whose apartment happens to be in the higher priced, more fashionable center of the city, where they can demand higher rents. People often sell their bigger apartments and buy smaller ones, using the profit to support themselves. Parents sometimes exchange a large apartment to acquire separate apartments, for themselves and for a married child, especially if they lack the cash to simply buy an apartment. Sales are complicated by the fact that apartment owners can only sell after all housing bills have been paid. The sale has become even more difficult now that the number of apartments for sale has increased.

Alternatively, people double up to free their apartments; others move into a single room to free their other room up, often to students. A pensioner who had been selling clothing, dishes, and books just to survive, posted an announcement and found a student willing to pay 50 lei or the equivalent in food, per month. Graduates of urban technical institutes unable to find work in their own villages often return to the city to search for jobs; they are among the families forced to rent apartments.

Often, families move elsewhere to free up their own apartment for rent in order to pay off outstanding debts. One family accrued such a large electricity debt that the entire family, consisting of Maria, a 61 year old pensioner, her daughter, son-in-law, and nephew, moved from their two room apartment into the two-room apartment of another family (already occupied by a couple and their 16 year old son). Maria's family used the rent from their own apartment to clear their debts, although the pressure of seven people in two rooms forced them to leave before they had intended. Another family moved into the balcony kitchen of another family in order to rent out their own apartment. Sometimes renting one's apartment is risky. One couple discovered their lodger was bottling bootleg whisky to sell in the market. Similar experiences make many apartment owner reluctant to rent to anyone but personal acquaintances of themselves or their friends.

Source: De Soto and Dudwick. 1997. “Poverty in Moldova: The Social Dimensions of Transition.” Facing poverty, poor families lucky enough to privatize desirable housing in good locations have often sold their asset and moved to much cheaper housing stock on the outskirts of the city in order to make

> 44 Hamilton, E. 1993.  Social Areas under State Socialism:  The Example of Moscow.  Ph.D. Diss., Columbia University.

52