Georgia: Gov’t to buy houses for up to 300 IDP families

In Georgia, the state body said on Friday, March 25, that up to 300 internally displaced (IDP) families will get houses in rural areas of the country from the Internally Displaced Persons, Ecomigrants and Livelihood Agency.

IDP families will have six months to choose their new homes across Georgia, with 5,000 IDP families expected to be housed under the Government’s Rural House initiative in 2022-2024.

The Agency stated that monthly meetings of a commission evaluating the families’ needs were held on a monthly basis to speed up the process of providing new accommodation and that the IDPs could apply at any moment to participate in the project.

Internal armed conflicts in Georgia in the 1990s resulted in the forcible relocation of Georgians from Russian-occupied Abkhazia and Tskhinvali, with over 251,000 individuals becoming internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country. The number increased by about 26,000 people following the Russian-Georgian conflict of 2008.

Last year, the Georgian government declared that it would offer new homes to 13,000 IDP families around the country as part of a four-year plan.

As many as 8,000 flats will be erected in various Georgian cities, including Tbilisi, Zugdidi, Kutaisi, and Rustavi, with a budget of 709,800,000 GEL (approximately $220,436,333/€200,237,480) set aside from the state budget for the IDP accommodation project between 2021 and 2024.

Since 2013, the Agency said 23,000 IDP families had been provided with new housing.