With keys in hand and a team of coworkers and friends carrying belongings behind her, Carma Brown stepped inside her new home.
It’s the first she’s ever owned.
After about six years on a waitlist for lease-to-own housing, her turn had come. Over the 30-year agreement, she’ll pay $600 a month, including taxes and home insurance. This allows Brown to keep her current job — and not have to work extra hours or get a second job — to afford her home.
“I’ve been wanting my own home my entire life,” Brown, 60, said. “To know this is mine now, I’m just in disbelief.”
Brown is part of a wave of new homeowners on the Cherokee Nation reservation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, which has for years increased its investments in housing for its citizens. Since the Cherokee Nation passed the Housing, Jobs and Sustainable Communities Act in 2019, and with a $120 million boost in 2022, the tribe has built more than 360 homes and rehabbed more than 900 others.
The latest permanent expansion of the housing law signed Sept. 27 allows the Cherokee Nation to dedicate $40 million to housing development and improvements every three years in perpetuity. Some of it will build new units. Some will go to programs like the one that helped Brown get her own home. About $6 million of those funds will be set aside for expanding community centers across the reservation.
Moments before signing the extension, Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said the legislation “is going to make a big difference in the lives of Cherokee people now and into the future.”
This legislation will address a number of needs, he said, “whether it’s elders needing some help with housing rehab or whether it’s a Cherokee family wanting to enjoy the dream of homeownership, or it’s anyone needing access to quality, affordable housing.”
Through a housing survey it conducted this summer, the Cherokee Nation projected it would face a $1.75 billion housing deficit over the next decade. The tribe identified a need of up to 9,400 units of all types and price points to provide housing security to Cherokee citizens.
Housing is out of reach for millions in the U.S., according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. There is no state, metropolitan area or county in the country where someone working full-time and earning minimum wage can afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment, let alone a new home.
There is no state in the U.S. with enough affordable housing for its lowest income renters, according to a reporting from the coalition. There are 10.8 million families with extremely low incomes, defined as those who meet federal poverty guidelines or fall at or below 30 percent of their area median income. For this group, the country is short of 7.3 million affordable or available rental homes, the coalition says.
A 2017 study from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that the housing problems for American Indians and Alaska Natives living on reservations and other tribal areas “remain strikingly more severe than those of other Americans.” The agency’s assessment cited disproportionately high poverty rates and low incomes as factors that Native people face, which can lead to increased rates of homelessness, overcrowding in homes, and people living with deficiencies, such as insufficient plumbing and heat.
To address these housing conditions, the agency estimated that around 33,000 new units would need to be built in tribal areas to eliminate overcrowding, and another 35,000 to replace units that were “severely physically inadequate.”
The Biden administration announced a $1.1 billion increase in funding in May to HUD’s Indian Housing block grant program, which provides “adequate housing” for Native Americans in the U.S. That amounted to a 40 percent increase in funding from last year.
Douglas Marconi, the executive director for the National American Indian Housing Council, said the Cherokee Nation taking such proactive measures for its housing needs is an important investment in the Nation’s future.
“The Cherokee Nation is leading the way in housing nationally,” Marconi said. “The Cherokee Nation is setting the example that we are investing in our communities and this investment is to serve the needs of our people.”
At the signing ceremony last month, Hoskin said the money from the new legislation is on top of those federal housing dollars the tribe is already receiving, which he said was “inadequate” to address all Native Americans’ housing needs. He added that the Cherokee Nation is using revenue from businesses within the nation to help fund this initiative.
“The United States does not meet its obligation when it comes to addressing housing needs across Indian Country,” Hoskin said. “We are the Cherokee Nation. We are not going to wait on the United States to come to the rescue.”
Sarah Saadian, senior vice president of public policy and field organizing for the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said the lack of affordable housing is made worse by the United State’s history with colonization and forced resettlement of tribes from their home lands.
There’s a lack of interest from the federal government in funding housing for tribal nations, she said. Though Congress still funds some tribal housing programs, lawmakers have not reauthorized the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Reauthorization Act, a landmark tribal housing law that expired more than a decade ago.
“There needs to be more political will righting these wrongs,” Saadian said. “We want all Native Americans to have access to housing just like we want everyone to have access to affordable housing.”
Building new homes in the last five years, Cherokee Nation representatives said sustainability was considered. Homes were built with improved energy efficiency, such as eco-friendly features like energy-efficient appliances and advanced insulation materials which help reduce carbon footprint.
Tribes in the U.S. are hit harder by climate change and usually have less resources to deal with those outcomes, according to the United State’s Fifth National Climate Assessment.
The report detailed how the vulnerability of tribes to climate change today can be attributed significantly to the U.S. government’s historical displacement of Indigenous lands.
Marconi said the need for housing cannot overshadow the importance of protecting the environment and looking for green alternatives.
“If we are not considering seven generations down the road, then our grandchildren’s grandchildren will suffer,” he said. “We practice being good stewards of the land and using resources with a mind to the impact it has on the environment.”
Todd Enlow, the director of the Cherokee Nation’s housing authority, said it’s important to think about the concept of community when building these new homes. The neighborhoods will feature playgrounds, walking trails and pavilions. The work to build and restore these homes will be done by Cherokee Nation citizens too, helping to stimulate the economy and provide jobs.
“Housing and community goes hand in hand,” he said at a committee meeting this year, where the reauthorization was discussed. “We are not just building structures and houses, but homes and communities.”
Brown said growing up, her family lived with her grandma, as well as her aunt and uncle and cousins, all under the same roof. Family members often slept two to a bed, with three beds in a room.
Overcrowding is more common on tribal lands than in the United States as a whole, according to HUD. More than 16 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native households were overcrowded, with each residence having more than one person per room. The same 2017 study said about 6 percent were severely overcrowded, with more than 1.5 persons per room.
Once she had children of her own, Brown cycled through smaller rental homes and apartments.
Now she has a three-bedroom, two-bath home with a two-car garage.
“I got to pick out the floor plan for this one and I went with as much space as I could,” she said. “I’m so excited and so thankful and appreciative.”
For years following the pandemic, Brown wondered if this day would come. The construction of new homes slowed in the area, coinciding with rising building material costs.
Finally, she’s home. She’s deciding where she’ll put a big Christmas tree for the holidays.
“I can’t wait to host all my kids here,” she said. “We used to be so cramped in my apartment. Now I can fit everybody.”
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