Exploring Neighbourhoods in Georgia: Promises and Challenges for Collaboration

In 2011 CRRC conducted a survey on Volunteering and Civic Participation in Georgia. A part of this survey aimed at exploring relationships between neighbours. The results indicate that the relationships between neighbours in Georgia can be a promising starting point for building social capital and achieving improved housing conditions through collaboration. The data show that just over a third of adults in Georgia are familiar with more than ten families in their neighbourhoods and most Georgians interact with their neighbours every day. A considerable amount of Georgians also report being involved in organized activities in which the person who takes on the role of mobilizer is usually respected by others. One challenge identified by this research is a lack of communication between neighbours regarding common problems and concerns. 

The data from the civic participation and volunteerism survey suggest that Georgians not only know many families in their neighbourhood but also maintain frequent contact with them; half of Georgians know all families in their neighbourhood and 37% know more than ten families. Only 12% of Georgians say they know less than 10 families in their neighbourhood. CRRC also asked Georgians about how often they talk to their neighbours. As it turned out, 78% talk to their neighbours every day and 18% at least once a week. However, in spite of frequent conversations, common problems are less discussed among neighbours which may prevent collaboration to fix important problems in their neighbourhood. The data show that only 15% always discuss common problems with their neighbours and 29% never do so. 

CRRC data also show that there is some degree of collaboration between neighbours in terms of cleaning common space. 71% of Georgians say that common space in their neighbourhood gets regularly cleaned and 78% say this is done by neighbours either collectively or on a rotating basis. This collaboration is a promising practice that has the potential to expand into other aspects of housing, such as improving the appearance of houses and yards in Georgia.  

Note: This question was asked to 71% of respondents who said that common space in their neighbourhood gets regularly cleaned.

How exactly does such collaboration work in Georgian neighbourhoods? Just over half of Georgians (52%) say there is a person in their neighbourhood who will organize people or solve a problem him/herself. Moreover, in about half of the cases (56%) this person is elected by other neighbours to handle neighbourhood problems. Most importantly, Georgians have a positive attitude towards these community organizers. Out of the 52% of Georgians who indicate that such a person exists, 81% of them say the majority of neighbours have a positive attitude towards this neighbour. 17% say that they have a neutral attitude towards this neighbour and only 1% thinks that the majority of neighbours have a negative attitude towards this person. 

The survey also asked Georgians about their attitude towards people who collect money in their neighbourhood to fix problems. 77% of Georgians respect these people because they spend energy to solve problems which concern everyone. In contrast, only 3% of Georgians say that they are suspicious of people who collect money in their neighbourhood because they make a profit out of it. 

Neighbours who collaborate are more likely to keep their houses and yards in good repair. This post has showed that many Georgian neighbourhoods have quite close-knit groups with a potential for improved collaboration. While lack of communication about problems that affect everyone remains a hindrance to collaboration, CRRC data suggest that those who take the initiative to organize and help in solving common problems are respected by others.

Housing IDPs | Lessons Learnt

In the current situation, one issue facing Georgia is what to do with and for the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) that are now coming from South Ossetia and the Kodori Gorge, in Upper Abkhazia. A friend with significant experience in development work posted a candid analysis in an e-mail group. We thought that the analysis is worth sharing since this issue affects the region.

So here is what he had to say:

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"I was speaking about this issue with some Georgian friends just yesterday. They have been involved in IDP shelter work with people from Abkhazia since the mid-1990s. I've done a bit of work with those shelters myself, and would STRONGLY encourage anybody getting involved with shelter issues now to visit some of these old shelters if they have not already done so, and not just in Tbilisi. Some of the shelters I saw in Kutaisi and Samegrelo were horrific. Families have been vegetating in them for fifteen years now, with every politician promising them return next year.

In our discussion, we came up with two big lessons learnt:

1. LESSON ONE: Don't pretend it's temporary

Yes, thankfully, most new IDPs - especially from Gori town - will go home soon. However, many IDPs in Georgia will not. It's not going to happen. Live with it. They weren't ethnically cleansed (houses burnt etc) to pave the way for their return, and Georgia lost the war. The Palestinians aren't returning any time soon, either. No idea how many people this is - let's say Kodori and South Ossetia. [...] We're prob talking 20,000 people minimum.

We should seek to identify those IDPs who will probably not go home soon, and seek durable, humane living conditions for them. Most of Georgia's old IDP shelters are a patchwork of small interventions - an NGO puts in windows, a year later, another puts in floors, two years later there's a new door. Look for yourself - this approach leads to crap results, not only in human terms, but also in terms of value for money. (Repeat assessments are one example - IDPs from Abkhazia have told me how sick they are of assessments by now.)

The key point to remember is that there will be loads of money coming in soon. After that, funds will dry up. By 2006, there was hardly any funding to be had for shelter work. Let's spend it well NOW, while there is money to be spent.

The main prob is that the GoG will probably not look favourably on this approach. IDPs in misery desperate to go home bolster Georgia's claim to these territories. One way to get round this would be to point out that should the IDPs return, the municipalities would get buildings in good shape, ready for privatization or social housing needs. Be diplomatic.

Urban Institute's voucher project was good, but the Georgian housing market was a lot less elastic than they thought. Handing out vouchers to buy flats worth 5000 dollars each to a few hundred families sent housing prices rocketing in Kutaisi (it wasn't enough to money to buy in Tbilisi or Batumi). Vouchers are not feasible on a large scale.

Privatization doesn't solve anything either. One day, your family lives in a crap shelter. The next day, it lives in a crap shelter you own. Without money to renovate, it improves security of residence, but living conditions are exactly the same. How will 50 broke families ever be able to repair their communal roof?

The way I see it, the only humane option is to (1) do large-scale thorough rehabilitation of existing buildings, or (2) to build new housing from scratch (NRC has done the latter on a small scale). A nice side effect is that such large-scale, donor-funded construction efforts will generate a lot of employment in a sector that will be badly affected by the probable fall in investment after this war.

2. LESSON TWO: Don't dump IDPs in depressed or remote areas

Placing people in "no future zones" like the town of Vani, where there is zero employment even for locals, is a bad idea. Also, some shelters in Samegrelo are in the middle of nowhere. Those IDPs who cannot escape get stuck there with nothing to do except to cry, to drink, or to do both. Some have been doing just that for over a decade now. Think poverty trap, think psychosocial problems, think domestic abuse. Also, microcredit or employment generation will not work in the back of beyond.

Maybe they should all be housed in Tbilisi?

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That's just my take, and that of some friends of mine. The history of sheltering IDPs from Abkhazia has created lots of "lessons learnt". Ask your more experienced Georgian colleagues and LNGO partners what they think, and please do visit a few shelters from the 1990s outside Tbilisi before you start knocking out funky proposals. Let's use the money that's gonna pour in now wisely, because we are not going to get a second shot at this.

I would be extremely grateful if we could hear the thoughts of more people on this."

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This, then, the comment of said person (who works in this field and therefore, for now, preferred not to be named). Any views?

Results from the Georgia IDP Housing Voucher Program

The Urban Institute, with the help of IPM, just finished a summative survey of their "Georgia IDP Voucher Program," funded by the US State Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. (N.B. a voucher is a promised subsidy towards the cost of purchasing a home). The Program aimed to resettle IDPs from Abkhazia and provide them with long-term housing solutions. The project was a piloted and carried out in the Kutaisi area. There seems to be some buy-in from the government to continue the program itself.

An interesting result related to family networks emerged from the presentation. The average income of those households who successfully converted their housing vouchers into the purchase of a residence is only 151 Lari a month and over 80% of successful households are unemployed. However, more than 45% of the successful group put in an average of $1,980 on top of the money (averaging $3,750) provided through the grant program to either purchase a more expensive residence or carry out capital improvements. Those who were unsuccessful had substantially lower incomes (much lower than the national IDP average).

SO, where's the money coming from? I asked the Chief of Party whether he thought IDPs who had successfully bought houses were lying about their income data (it's notoriously unreliable in this part of the world and rarely matches expenditure data). He said he had no information to prove or disprove this. However, the survey showed that most respondents claimed that they were receiving money either from relatives either abroad or inside Georgia.

Such a finding makes sense. IDPs will have strong networks outside and inside Georgia, since the population from Abkhazia was dispersed. This means that poor IDPs may often have a rich relative or close friend to ask for help. Additionally, property is often seen as a good investment in Georgia (since most Georgian view most other investments as too unstable) and networks may especially be willing to help with property.

On a small methodological note, one of the problems raised about the survey was that since the program had been run for two years, IDPs had been in their new housing for different amounts of time, yielding different results.

Please contact us for the PowerPoint presentation if you are interested.