Tribal communities welcome federal relief funds to help ease housing issues

（单词翻译）

Tribal¹ communities welcome federal relief funds to help ease housing issues

Transcript²

Tribal housing has been underfunded for decades. With pandemic relief funding, tribes now say they should be able to build as many homes in just a few years as they have in the last 25.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Affordable³ housing is in short supply on this country's Indian reservations, just as it is just about everywhere else. There's a big federal block grant for tribal housing, but it's never been enough to meet the need. Funding has been essentially⁴ flat for decades until now. It's growing because of federal pandemic relief dollars. Montana Public Radio's Freddy Monares reports from one of seven reservations in that state.

FREDDY MONARES, BYLINE⁵: A 2017 federal assessment⁶ of housing needs for American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian people found that reservations need 68,000 new homes to eliminate overcrowding and to replace units that are inadequate⁷. Sarah Saadian, vice⁸ president of public policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition⁹, says that number is likely an undercount.

SARAH SAADIAN: But based on the numbers that exist, we see very consistently that Native Americans have some of the worst housing needs in the U.S.

MONARES: Fifty-four-year-old Tyrone Burke lives that reality on the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe's reservation in Montana. He was couch surfing with relatives until September, when a space opened at the tribal housing authorities transitional living center. He rolls his wheelchair down a ramp¹⁰ to the door of his living unit. It's the size of a studio apartment.

TYRONE BURKE: Like I said, for family get-togethers, this wouldn't be very ideal, you know, but it's a space for for me and my kids, you know?

MONARES: He shares a bunk¹¹ bed with his 10-year-old son. His 11-year-old daughter has a bed to herself. There's a small kitchen and a wheelchair-accessible shower, which Burke needs after he lost a leg due to complications from diabetes¹². Burke, who's unemployed¹³ and survives on disability payments, wants a bigger place for his five other older kids to stay and visit.

BURKE: If you have a house, you can start your own memories and your own bonds with your own, you know, grandkids and nieces and nephews.

MONARES: The waiting list Burke is on to get a bigger place has roughly 200 people on it. The housing authority here manages about 500 affordable housing units total. Some were built with help from a block grant established in the 1990s that splits $650 million a year among more than 50 tribes nationwide. The amount has stayed the same for decades.

JODY PEREZ: Our pot of funds does not grow. It just shrinks. And there's no inflation accounting¹⁴ for it, so it literally¹⁵ shrinks every year.

MONARES: Jody Perez, executive director for the Salish and Kootenai Housing Authority, says in the last 25 years, block grant funding has helped the tribes here to build a total of 52 affordable housing units. She says the tribes plan to build nearly that many in just the next year or so with pandemic relief money.

PEREZ: I can't really believe Congress is allocating¹⁶ this much funding because we've never had it before.

MONARES: The National American Indian Housing Council says in the last two years, tribal housing programs have received more than $4 billion in federal funding. It's making a difference for bigger tribes, too, like the Cherokee Nation, with more than 140,000 people on its reservation in Oklahoma. Cherokee Housing Authority interim¹⁷ executive director Jerri Killer¹⁸ says the money will help wipe out the majority of the waiting lists that some 4,000 people are on for various housing programs.

JERRI KILLER: That's for, you know, housing rehab. That's helping¹⁹ with some rental²⁰ subsidies²¹. That's also building rental units. That's building replacement²² homes. That's building new construction homes.

MONARES: Killer says the housing authority plans to build a minimum of 200 homes.

KILLER: Oh, yeah, we're going now. We're rocking and rolling right now.

MONARES: Back in Montana, Tyrone Burke is hopeful. He's tried to rent a home on his own.

BURKE: For a three-bedroom that I was looking at, it with well over $1,500, $1,600 a month, you know, and it was hard for me to find a place.

MONARES: The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes plan to start building new homes with the federal relief funds this year. For NPR News, I'm Freddy Monares in Pablo, Mont.