Native American Housing

Although the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has invested $4.3 billion during the past decade for housing and community development in Native American tribal areas, the Urban Institute recently reported that 40 percent of Native Americans in tribal areas live in overcrowded or physically inadequate housing. Providing safe and decent housing at reasonable cost is difficult in tribal areas because of (1) their remoteness and austere settings, (2) the limited human resources of many Indian housing authorities, (3) land-use restrictions, (4) the difficulty that contractors and Indian housing authorities have in complying with statutory requirements to give hiring preference to Indians, and (5) vandalism and neglect. New Indian housing legislation, set to take effect in October 1997, changes HUD's Indian housing assistance by requiring block grants to each of more than 550 tribes instead of categorical grants to each of 180 housing authorities that now exist. HUD believes that its initial workload could rise significantly.

GAO noted that: (1) from fiscal year (FY) 1986 through FY 1995, HUD provided $4.3 billion (constant 1995 dollars) for housing and community development in tribal areas; (2) of this amount, HUD provided $3.9 billion to approximately 189 Native American housing authorities to develop and maintain affordable housing and assist low-income renters; (3) in this period, the authorities used the funds to construct over 24,000 single-family homes, operate and maintain existing housing, and encourage other development; (4) over the decade, HUD also has provided direct block grants totalling over $424 million (constant 1995 dollars) to eligible tribes for community development and mortgage assistance; (5) many factors complicate and make costly the development and maintenance of affordable housing for Native Americans; (6) these factors include the remoteness and limited human resources of many Native American housing authorities and the Native American communities they serve, land-use restrictions and the inhospitality of the land, the difficulty that contractors and Native American housing authorities have in complying with statutory requirements to give hiring preference to Native Americans, and the vandalism and neglect that make heavy demands on the scarce maintenance funds available to Native American housing authorities; (7) in December 1996, the Seattle Times reported 29 instances of possible mismanagement or misuse of federal funds by Native American housing authorities; (8) for example, the Times reported that Native American housing authorities used federal funds to build luxury homes, covered the mismanagement of one federal grant with funds from another grant, and reprogrammed large federal grants without HUD's approval; (9) HUD's Inspector General found that most of these reports were accurate; (10) GAO's work found that HUD does not effectively apply its system for alerting it to poorly performing Native American housing authorities across its Native American Programs field offices; (11) as a result, HUD may not be able to detect additional instances of mismanagement or misuse of funding; and (12) futhermore, HUD's approach to overseeing Native American housing may change, depending on regulations now being developed to implement the new Native American housing legislation.