Between 2011 and 2016, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development conducted the largest investigation ever undertaken on the housing crisis that plagues Native American reservations.
Released in January, the report determined that housing problems for Native Americans were “extreme by any standard,” with 23 percent living with some kind of physical condition issue, compared with 5 percent throughout the country.
“During the past two decades … the overcrowding and physical housing problems of American Indians and Alaska Natives living on reservations … remain strikingly more severe than those of other Americans,” the study said.
The report specifically dialed in on the nation’s largest tribal area: the Navajo Nation, a 27,425-square-mile reservation that spans across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, with a population of about 300,000 people.
The study cited a 2011 assessment by the Navajo Nation that estimated 34,100 housing units needed to be replaced because of poor condition, with nearly 60 percent living in dilapidated houses in need of repair and 30 percent with incomplete bathrooms or kitchens.
It would take up to $8.9 billion to bring houses within the Navajo Nation up to livable conditions, the Navajo Nation assessment determined.
“When I first walked out on the reservation, I thought I was walking into a third world country,” said Faye Hammond, wife of Duane Hammond, pastor for the Assembly of God in Newcomb, New Mexico. “It’s a different world out here. It’s the reservation, that’s the only way I can explain it.”
In 1996, the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act reformed how the federal government allocated funds for housing aid to Native Americans, which seemed to have some initial success.
From 1998 to 2014, Congress distributed an average of $667 million annually to tribes. In 2015 and 2016, the number remained at $650 million, but the report says the program’s buying power declined markedly over that time.
Even with funding, the Navajo Nation has its own particular problems.
In June, Sen. John McCain’s office and the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs released its investigation into claims that the Navajo Housing Authority mismanaged federal housing grants provided by HUD.
The investigation found that despite receiving more than $803 million in housing grants from HUD over the past decade – by far the most of any U.S. tribe – only 1,110 homes were built.
In 2015, the Navajo Housing Authority received $83.7 million from HUD. Only 102 homes were built, McCain’s investigation found. The Cherokee Nation, on the other hand, built 277 new homes with just $28.5 million in funding.
“A lack of sufficient planning by NHA exposed its wasteful, fraudulent and abusive use of housing funds,” according to the report, which found NHA employees had used funds to travel to Hawaii and Las Vegas.
Regardless, both reports stress the importance stable housing has for a healthy family.
Physical housing issues (plumbing, kitchen, heating) are negligible for the rest of the country, but on Native American lands, nearly 60 percent of households had one or more housing problem, the HUD study said.
So, it’s with open arms that the Hammonds welcomed the assistance of members of Durango’s First Presbyterian Church.
“We don’t have a lot out here,” Faye Hammond said. “But they’ve been such a blessing.”
Newcomb is a small, dispersed community on the high desert of New Mexico, about an hour’s drive south of Shiprock, the Navajo Nation’s largest population center with about 9,000 people, according to a 2010 census.
Yet in Newcomb, it’s estimated about 600 people live in the 6-square-mile enclave, which sits along the Trails of the Ancients scenic byway among the archaeologically rich sites of the ancestral Puebloans, Navajo and Apache.
Hammond says there’s not much opportunity for work, so poverty is high. As a result, the sad state of housing is just one of the issues Navajos deal with daily.
But about seven years ago, Hammond came in contact with members of Durango’s First Presbyterian Church, a congregation of about 150 people that meets at the corner of 12th Street and East Third Avenue.
Church members were introduced to a family that lived without water or electricity in an isolated part of the already-remote community. Not long after, they visited Newcomb and installed solar panels for the family.
“They turned on electricity for the first time and everyone was rejoicing,” Hammond said.
Courtney Hightower, a member of the First Presbyterian Church, said the congregation has kept up this relationship ever since, traveling down to Newcomb each summer to help selected families make improvements on their homes.
“A lot of times, mission teams go into communities that are impoverished and impose what they think the community needs,” she said. “We were mindful in entering into this relationship and super attune to what they are needing.”
A few years ago, the group targeted the house of an elderly woman who had her kids and grandkids all under the same roof. Because of a sewage problem, the floor of the house was spongy.
“They replaced everything, and it looked like a new home when they got done,” Hammond said. “When she talks about it, she (the elderly woman) just gets so excited, and that’s been four years ago.”
In August, about 10 members of the church went to Newcomb to help a family replace its roof, which was increasingly susceptible to the region’s powerful winds that can reach up to 80 miles an hour.
“A new roof for a family is a big deal,” Hightower said. “Now, they have more peace whenever the winds come. They don’t feel like they’ll blow away.”
The First Presbyterian Church has increased its outreach to Newcomb, holding a Christmas dinner each year. And Hightower said they plan on another home improvement project next summer.
“I think it’s helping solidify our identity as a missional church,” she said. “And I think it’s also helping us realize we don’t necessarily have to go far away, internationally or even far outside of the state, to do a missions trip.”
In turn, the community has embraced the outsiders, not an easy feat with the Navajo people, Hammond said.
During the church’s home-improvement project last year, about 15 Navajos helped with the work.
There’s no quick fix or end in sight for the housing crisis on the Navajo Nation, as well as the myriad other issues, such as embedded poverty, alcoholism and domestic violence, Hammond said.
Yet the sight of Durango’s volunteers each year offers some sense of hope.
“You can tell people you care, but you need to show them,” Hammond said. “(Navajo people) are hard to win, but once you win them, you have friends for life and you know that. I know they feel these people in Durango are their friends.”
jromeo@durangoherald.com
