It's shelter but not a home

Mr. Nabardinshvili and fellow refugees at Tserovani agree. "I don't know what they want to do by building these houses, but I know that I will go back to my village, in any case," he said.

He doesn't see much to entice him to stay. "We'll never live in as good conditions here as we did at home," he said, standing between two hastily completed houses on the settlement's edge.

Another problem for the refugees who will live in the settlement is jobs. "Nobody knows what it will be like, how we'll make money," Nabardinshvili says. "There is no land to make a living on here."

In Kurta, Nabardinshvili and many of his neighbors were farmers. In Tserovani, they will have some land for personal gardens, but most will have to become urban workers to make a living. Standing amid drab houses in various stages of construction, he worries that Tserovani will become a ghetto.

The government plans to survey all inhabitants about their professions and will help them find work, said Subeliani. Where these jobs will come from, though, is not clear.

Georgia's economy is in a precarious position from the August war, according to Vladimir Papava, an economist at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic International Studies.

Still, each house in the new settlement will have furniture and necessary household items, Subeliani said. In his Tbilisi office, he showed off an assortment of pots, pans, an iron for clothing, and other equipment.

Also, "waiting for them when they walk in the door will be [money] on the kitchen table to buy any necessary goods during the first month," he said.

In addition, refugees will have some choice as to where they live, and the government will try to resettle entire communities together, Subeliani said. The government has promised to build churches, schools, shops, and other communal buildings to make the settlement more of a real community.

New Energy, the construction company responsible for Tserovani, is building the communal buildings out of its own pocket, but no timeline has been set, according to Zura Jikia, the company's general director.

"New Energy is very proud that we're building these villages," he said, adding that the company is not profiting from the construction of Tserovani's 2,700 houses.

However, an American contractor said a New Energy executive recently told him the company does not have enough money to pay for the communal buildings.

The government is not paying companies enough per house to even cover construction costs, said the contractor, who didn't want his name used because he works on government contracts.

While the refugees who will live in the settlement still dream of their former homes and hope they'll be allowed to go back, they're grateful to have shelter.

"It's a home, at least," said Giorgi Baruashvili, a refugee from Tsirznisi. Most importantly for him, it will get his family out of the former office building in Tbilisi, where they're living with hundreds of other displaced people.

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