Tribe seeks solutions to housing shortage

Associated Press

PINE RIDGE, S.D.

Delora Kills Enemy sleeps on her van’s back seat. Raymond Eagle Hawk, his girlfriend and young daughter live in a plywood-walled shack barely larger than their bed. Rachel Hunter shares a single bedroom with her boyfriend and two children.

The housing shortage on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is a long-standing problem for thousands of Oglala Sioux members – from the poorest to those who can afford to buy a house – but the tribe is pushing the issue into the spotlight again after severe storms and flooding in May spurred a federal disaster declaration.

Roughly 200 households are receiving new homes and about 100 homes will be repaired. A task force of federal and tribal officials and housing advocates also began work this month on a new plan to address the shortage on the reservation of about 35,000 people, starting with a study of current houses and their condition to better understand the situation. Tribal officials say the reservation needs 4,000 more units to ease crowding and ensure residences have plumbing and electricity.

The task force will use the results in a plan to help address the shortage and improve the tribe’s ability to get grant funding, federal officials said. Tribal housing leaders hope the numbers back up their estimates and spur federal recognition, since the largest direct grant for Native American housing programs hasn’t kept up with inflation since the 1990s.

“I can show a plan from 1997 with the same amount of money and the same ideas,” said Vince Martin, chief operating officer of Oglala Sioux Lakota Housing. “It’s just not enough resources to meet that need.”

The tribe gets between about $10 million and $12 million, which it uses to build an average of between 30 and 40 housing units a year.

Almost half of Pine Ridge’s residents live in poverty, and unemployment sits at more than 21 percent, though some estimates peg joblessness as much higher among tribal members on the reservation.

Oglala Sioux Lakota Housing’s inventory includes about 1,200 low-income rentals and roughly 500 homes for ownership that have been built since the 1960s, Martin said, estimating an average of between 12 and 15 people live in each home.