| Ho-Chunk, Inc.: Press release |
Return To Press Area Contents11.09.10
$1M Will Help Indians Buy Homes
WINNEBAGO, Neb. (Omaha World-Herald) — Owning a home just got more affordable on the Winnebago Indian Reservation.
A locally grown $1 million housing stimulus program — created and funded by Winnebagos — will provide $50,000 more in down payment assistance to tribal members living on the northeast Nebraska reservation.
“It allows potential homeowners to pay a monthly house payment that's not much more than rent would cost and it allows them to … actually start building equity,'' said Janice Jessen, a spokeswoman for Ho-Chunk Inc., an economic development corporation in Winnebago.
For the first time in the history of many Winnebago families, she said, the dream of homeownership and the opportunity to build equity and a family inheritance are within reach.
The reservation's housing need is real, said Lance Morgan, president and chief executive of Ho-Chunk. About 2,500 people live on the Thurston County-based reservation.
Although the tribe has built or purchased about 100 housing units during the past 15 years — many of them in Ho-Chunk Village, a commercial and residential area on the north edge of Winnebago — the supply has been insufficient to meet current and future needs, Morgan said.
Nearly half of the tribe's population is under age 18. Housing demand during the next 10 to 20 years is expected to require at least 100 additional housing units, Morgan said. As many as 150 to 200 units may be needed to satisfy actual housing demand.
In the spring of 2007, there were 507 housing units on the reservation, more than half of them rentals, according to a study done for the tribe.
Forty-four housing units have since been added, including Little Priest Apartments in 2009, which serves only very low- to low-income households.
Homeownership on the reservation trails far behind the national average for American Indians and even further behind when compared to white households, according to U.S. Census Bureau surveys.
There are many reasons for the American Indian homeownership gap, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. They include such things as low incomes, weak credit histories, a lack of mortgage financing and the challenges of real estate lending on tribal trust lands.
The problems have been self-perpetuating for generations, Jessen said.
“Most people everywhere else, no matter what, have a home that they're able to live off in retirement or pass on to their heirs,'' Jessen said. “That has not been the case here. Each new generation has to start from scratch.''
Prospective reservation homeowners lining up for the new program will be screened to ensure that they have the ability to make monthly payments and can meet other financial requirements of a mortgage. They also will attend classes on basic home maintenance.
John Blackhawk, tribal chairman, said combining existing down payment assistance programs with the new $1 million program will reduce the cost of purchasing a new home on the reservation by as much as a third. Some new buyers could receive up to $70,000 in total down payment assistance.
Eighty percent of the initial funding for the new program comes from a Ho-Chunk dividend paid to the tribe. The rest comes from the tribe's penny-per-gallon gasoline tax. The gas tax will provide an ongoing funding stream for the down payment program.
The program is limited to new home construction anywhere on the reservation.
About 30 homes have been built during the past seven years using some form of tribal down payment assistance. The pace of four or five new homes a year, however, is below the projected demand of 10 to 20 homes annually, Morgan said.
The slow growth in new homes on the reservation is thought to be caused by the high cost of new home construction and the resulting mortgage payments. Monthly mortgage payments could be cut by 40 percent to 50 percent under the enhanced assistance programs.
Morgan said the program is the result of years of study on how to make the purchase of new homes on the reservation affordable.
“Normally, an expenditure of $1 million by the tribe would only provide six or seven rental housing units,'' Morgan said.
With the new program, he said, 20 homeowners would be created with the initial fund instead of six or seven renters.
By David Hendee - OMAHA WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
