By Jasz Garrett
Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – The Wells Fargo Foundation and Enterprise Community Partners announced the winners of the 2023 Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge, a $20 million nationwide competition to find innovative housing solutions, according to an Enterprise Community press release.
Tlingit and Haida Regional Housing Authority was one of six organizations selected and awarded a $2 million grant. Each winning organization received between $2 million and $3 million in grants and support from peers and industry experts in order to scale new strategies at making homes more accessible and affordable.
President and CEO of Tlingit & Haida Regional Housing Authority, Jackie Pata, first gave some background on the organization.
“So, Tlingit & Haida Regional Housing Authority is celebrating its 50th year anniversary this year. And we’re really excited about that. The Housing Authority has made a big difference in Southeast Alaska, particularly in the villages where other housing just wasn’t really readily made available,” she said. “And it was created at a time in the country where Indian Housing Authorities were just getting started. So, all the Indian Housing Authorities are around at that same point receiving federal funds for housing assistance for Alaskan Natives, American Indians and now Native Hawaiians are included in the programs.”
In Southeast Alaska, the T&H Regional Housing Authority began rethinking how to create sustainable housing so they could address the financial needs in rural Alaska and provide low-income tribal citizens access to homeownership on tribal lands.
Their main goal was to develop the financial education and capacity of more than 100 families in the Juneau region.
The housing authority serves 14 tribes across Southeast Alaska. Pata said they started with communities that were the most economically income-challenged, including Angoon, Kake, and Klawock.
That’s how they came up with Success Starts with Me (SSWM), which Pata said has only been a success so far.
SSWM started right before the COVID-19 pandemic when the regional housing authority started requiring their staff to take a financial education class.
After seeing the positive impact on their staff, Pata said that’s when they knew they wanted to broaden the program throughout Southeast Alaska. Receiving the $2M grant allows them to move the program forward.
“Angoon was one of our first communities. I like to tell that story. We have a group of skilled workers that we actually even take to other communities to sometimes to help us frame a home or something like that. Several of them have gone through our apprenticeship programs,” she said. “They’ve worked on their own homes and built their own homes. So, they got sweat equity, which also reduced their purchase price of their home, and they went through all the financial education classes. And they have a home that’s affordable, that doesn’t cost them much more or different than what they were paying for rent.”
70% of tribal citizens served by the housing authority are renters, compared to 36% of the population statewide and nationally. SSWM aims to bridge the gap between traditional mortgage loans and the financial needs in rural Alaska to provide low-income tribal citizens access to homeownership on tribal lands.
To make SSWM work, Tlingit and Haida partnered with other organizations, like Haa Yakaawu Financial Corporation who offers construction and home loans with individualized down payments, payback schedules, and education courses.
They also partnered with tribal governments who said they want to find a solution, and in some cases they are the ones who provide the land.
Pata said training and education are key components of SSWM.
SSWM allows landowners to build on their land and keep it under Tribal ownership. Until the Tribes collectively agreed to make homeownership a priority in 2019, no new affordable housing had been built in villages in 20 years.
An important factor of SSWM is that all the mortgage payments paid into the pool will be available capital for future loans.
Pata shared why she thinks the program is important from a cultural perspective.
“A lot of folks have been coming home or wanting to come home to be part of their language programs or their cultural activities. But it’s hard for them to live in those small communities when there’s no homes there for them to live in,” Pata said. “And when they choose to and do live within their communities, they just add another layer of sustainable economic strength in the community. And so, I think that that’s really important. But we also allow folks that participate in the program to make decisions about their home and how it feels and works for them, so they can feel connected.”
