14-Jun-1998 Sunday
TAMPA, Fla. -- Forty percent of housing on U.S. Indian reservations is
substandard, with many homes too crowded and lacking adequate plumbing, the
head of the National American Indian Housing Council said.
Reservations, on which an estimated 800,000 Indians live, need 200,000 new
housing units immediately, Chairman Chester Carl told the group's
convention in Tampa earlier this month.
"In tribal areas, 40 percent of the housing is considered substandard,
compared to 5.9 percent of housing generally," Carl said, adding that 21
percent of dwellings were overcrowded and 16 percent did not have adequate
plumbing.
"These problems are solvable," Carl, a member of the Navajo tribe, said at
a news conference.
Carl said one of the biggest problems was a backlog of title search
requests at the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs that was delaying mortgage
applications by several years. Only 91 conventional mortgages have been
approved for homes on tribal lands in the past five years, he said.
"It's a problem the government could fix," he said, calling for the bureau
to be given more funds to end the backlog. Ken Goosens, the manager for
native American housing at the Federal National Mortgage Association, said
Fannie Mae had allocated $1 trillion for minority mortgages and was working
with 54 tribes in 16 states.
"We are absolutely committed to opening up conventional mortgages on tribal
lands," Goosens said.
Jacqueline Johnson, assistant secretary for native American programs at the
Department of Housing and Urban Development, said HUD was starting trial
programs to encourage home ownership on reservations under a law passed in
1996. Johnson said it was crucial to get more private lenders involved in
mortgages for Indian housing.