Home ownership rising on Arizona reservations

Judy Nichols

Thursday, Jan. 6, 2005 | 9:27 a.m.

PHOENIX -- Inside the front door of Serena Norris' moss-green home is a welcome mat bearing the Pima symbol of the Man in the Maze, a circular depiction of a person's path through life.

Norris' path has brought her to a home of her own, commonplace for most Americans but nearly unattainable for those living on reservations.

But reliable jobs -- courtesy of casinos -- and innovative legal and financial programs have private lenders looking at reservations as safe investments for the first time.

In the past, the trust status of reservations, which prohibits sale of land outside the tribe, made banks unwilling to fund conventional mortgages. If the borrower defaulted, the bank could not foreclose on the land.

"There have been two big impediments to housing: jobs and a legal structure to allow mortgages," said Stephen Hart, a lawyer with Lewis and Roca, a Phoenix law firm working with a task force to increase housing on reservations.

"The issue of jobs is being answered in part by gaming," Hart said. "Not just gaming jobs, but probation officers, policemen, court clerks. These people make money, and they want to buy a house and invest in the community."

Tribes are educating members about financing, helping them clear credit problems and finding ways to shorten title searches, which in the past have taken up to three years through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which administers Indian land.

Tribal members who qualified as low-income could get on long waiting lists for subsidized cookie-cutter housing built by the BIA. Those who didn't qualify were relegated to trailers, unless they had enough cash to pay for construction.

"The estimate is that over 56 percent of households on tribal lands are living in substandard conditions or are paying too much for housing," said Sheila D. Harris, director of the Arizona Department of Housing, which is helping funnel housing money and resources to tribes.

"People finally understood that, the way the BIA did things, this would never change. There isn't enough money," she said. "So we had to figure out how to take the money we have and do more with it."

In 2003 Gov. Janet Napolitano and tribal leaders formed a Tribal Housing Task Force to work on ways to increase housing.

The classifications of reservation land caused problems, Harris said.

"Tribes needed a lending structure that was easier to navigate," Harris said.

Norris, a business manager with the tribe's Saddleback Communications, is the first in the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community to build a home using a new mortgage-guarantee program. Her three-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath house cost $90,000 to build.

The federal government guarantees the mortgage. If Norris doesn't make the payments, the bank can foreclose and the tribe can buy her house.

The tribe could either work with Norris to become current with the mortgage, or the tribe could lease the home to another family member. The land always remains in trust for her family. If the house were on tribal land, the home could be leased to any tribal member.

So now, instead of sharing a 10-foot by 10-foot room in her mother's house, Norris and her daughter, Jamie, 6, wake up in their own bedrooms, eat breakfast in a spacious tiled kitchen, and watch movies in their living room.

"I enjoy it every single day," she said. "I consider myself very lucky."

On the Navajo Reservation, 4 1/2 years of negotiation have resulted in a program that allows the Navajo Housing Authority to guarantee loans.

"We are taking what typical American people enjoy and bringing it to the reservation," said Chester Carl, chairman and executive officer of the Navajo Housing Authority.

Carl said the tribe put aside a reserve account to offset any delinquencies or foreclosures, with a goal to finance at least 500 mortgages a year.

"The hope is that we'll eventually provide a shelter to every family in need of a house," Carl said. "If we wait on the sideline for the federal government to come in and build us a house, find us a job, it's not going to happen."

The White Mountain Apache Tribe became the first in the nation to issue tax-exempt bonds for housing.

The tribe used block-grant money from the federal government to leverage the bonds, paying $900,000 in fees, said A.J. Yazzie, a financial consultant for the tribe. It raised $25 million, which has financed more than 300 homes, leased to tribal members with an option to purchase them.

In October, in another house on the Salt River Reservation, 4-year-old Tyler Manuel twirled across the carpeting of her new bedroom as her mother and father completed the walk-through of their just-finished home.

Tyler's father, Darren Manuel, a Pima who works at Casino Arizona, said his grandfather gave the land to his father, who gave it to him.

"And I will give it and this house to my children," Manuel said.