Thirty federal programs can fund Native American housing. GAO told the Senate that the money has not kept pace with construction costs, and that Tribes mostly use it to hold existing housing together rather than build.
2 min read
Original editorial artwork generated for Hugin.
GAO testified before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on September 17, from ongoing work. Its preliminary observations: 30 federal programs can provide housing support targeted to Native American communities — American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian — the largest being the Indian Housing Block Grant. Tribes and tribal organizations GAO contacted said they use those programs primarily to maintain existing housing and, to a lesser extent, to construct new, and named limitations including funding that 'had not kept pace with rising construction costs' and certain program restrictions. GAO is also examining homelessness that does not look like homelessness in the federal data — including 'doubling up', temporarily staying with others.
Two things in this testimony are worth separating: how much help exists, and
whether the thing it is measured against is being measured at all.
The programs
GAO's preliminary observations indicate that 30 federal programs can provide
housing support targeted to Native American communities, including those that
are American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) and Native Hawaiian.
The largest is the Indian Housing Block Grant. Thirty programs is not a shortage
of programs.
What the Tribes, tribal organizations and Native Hawaiian organization GAO
contacted said about using them:
Tribes, tribal organizations, and Native Hawaiian organizations that GAO
contacted indicated that they use federal programs primarily to maintain
existing housing and, to a lesser extent, to construct new housing.
And the limit they named: "limited funding that had not kept pace with rising
construction costs and certain program restrictions."
A budget that is flat while construction costs rise is a budget that quietly
converts from building to patching. Nobody decides that; it just happens, one
bid at a time.
The part that is harder to count
GAO's second line of work is homelessness — and specifically a form of it that
standard counts miss:
We're also looking at Tribes' experiences with homelessness (including
temporarily staying with others, or, "doubling up") and how Tribes use
Department of Housing and Urban Development programs to address it.
Someone sleeping on a relative's floor is housed for the purposes of most
counts. Whether a program reaches them depends on whether the definition it
runs on includes them.
What this is and is not
⚠ This is testimony from ongoing work, and GAO calls the findings
preliminary. Its samples are explicitly nongeneralizable — 12 Tribes and tribal
organizations plus one Native Hawaiian organization on program use, 19 on
homelessness strategies. Those are views on the record, not a national estimate,
and this record does not convert them into one.
The final report is the document to watch. This is the Senate hearing it was
written for.
