The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco (FHLBank San Francisco) has launched a $1 million Tribal Nations Program that provides infrastructure funding grants to increase the supply of affordable housing for Native American communities.
“Native American communities are experiencing an acute housing crisis, much of which is because of a lack of dedicated resources and necessary infrastructure to apply for grants and funding,” said Teresa Bryce Bazemore, president and CEO of FHLBank San Francisco. “Solving the affordable housing crisis in our country is core to our mission and central to everything we do as an organization. Developing an infrastructure for tribal organizations to successfully access available development resources is a critical step for increasing the supply of affordable housing for Native American communities in our district.”
For this initiative, the California Coalition for Rural Housing will partner with the Arizona Housing Coalition, the Northern Circle Indian Housing Authority and Pala Housing Resource Center in California, and with the Nevada Housing Coalition to deliver resources to meet the infrastructure development goals of the Tribal Nations Program.
“Tribal Nations face chronic underdevelopment and poor housing conditions, the legacy of hundreds of years of persecution, discrimination, and displacement,” said Robert Wiener, executive director of the California Coalition for Rural Housing (CCRH). “This grant will enable CCRH and our partners in Arizona, Nevada, and California to build the capacity of Tribes to access and optimize state housing and community development resources to improve the living conditions of Tribal members on Tribal land.”
Grant dollars from the Tribal Nations Program will be allocated based on the percentage of Native American population across the Bank’s three-state district of Arizona, California, and Nevada. Funding will support capacity building efforts and delivery of technical assistance designed to help tribal organizations submit competitive applications for funding from the Bank’s Affordable Housing Program (AHP), as well as for Low Income Housing Tax Credits and other federal, state and local housing and community programs.
According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), approximately 15% of Native populations live with overcrowding, compared with the national average of 2%. Emphasizing the need for more affordable housing, HUD research estimates 68,000 additional units are needed to replace severely inadequate units and eliminate overcrowding on Native American Tribal lands.
