New state law addresses affordable housing crisis on tribal lands 

MENDOCINO CO., 10/14/24 – Before becoming the Deputy Director of the Ukiah-based Northern Circle Indian Housing Authority (NCIHA) earlier this year, Moriah McGill started as a receptionist in 2014 and worked her way up the organization. McGill was partially raised in Covelo, home of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, a confederated sovereign nation of seven tribes. As a young adult, McGill always wanted a job that would help her community. However, she didn’t have a career path until she joined NCIHA. 

“My sister was working at NCIHA, and she told me there was an opening for the receptionist position. I was lucky enough to be hired,” McGill said. “I absolutely fell in love with housing and community development.”  

Now McGill’s ability to strategize affordable housing solutions on tribal land has expanded with the passage of a new state law, SB 1187, which addresses shortcomings in housing policy and the affordable housing crisis in Native American communities.  

According to a report by the California Coalition for Rural Housing, 23.3% of people in tribal communities pay more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities. And according to the latest Mendocino County Point-in-Time (PIT) homelessness survey, homelessness among county tribes has tripled since 2023 and almost quadrupled since 2022.  

The tribally designated housing entity NCIHA was created in 1979 to address affordable housing issues facing many Native Americans. The organization works on behalf of eight federally recognized tribes in Northern California and provides housing programs and services like rental assistance, move-in deposit support, housing rehabilitation and onsite housing for those struggling to find low-cost housing.  

NCIHA’s consortium includes five Mendocino County Indian tribes: the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians, Manchester-Point Arena Band of Pomo Indians, the Redwood Valley Little River Band of Pomo Indians, the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians and the Guidiville Rancheria.

To the delight of NCIHA and McGill, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed SB 1187, called the Tribal Housing Reconstitution and Resiliency Act. The bill was sponsored by 2^nd District State Senator Mike McGuire, who represents Mendocino County, and establishes the Tribal Housing Grant Program Trust Fund, which will be managed by the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), the state’s managing housing authority. In the run-up to the bill, NCIHA worked closely with McGuire to ensure that SB 1187 would meet the affordable housing needs of Native Americans.  

The new law secures annual government funding for affordable housing on tribal lands statewide through a grant program. The funds will be allocated for housing services like homebuyer assistance, housing and credit counseling and rental assistance. The program will also support project costs such as new construction and site preparation, as well as management services for affordable housing such as loan processing and tenant selection. The law requires projects to use construction funds within seven years and other program funds within five years. The amount allocated for the grant program will not be determined until next year.  

How tribes have struggled for affordable housing 

One of the most essential federal housing plans created for tribes was the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996, a program administered under the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The HUD and NAHASDA legislation consolidated previous housing programs into a single grant program, called the Indian Housing Block Grant. 

This act erased many regulatory guidelines that previously burdened tribes and limited them from building or renovating affordable housing. But although NAHASDA was meant to help tribes, issues arose that made it difficult for tribes and individuals to plan, especially for multi-year projects. NAHASDA eventually expired in 2013, but funding is still allocated for tribes under the block grant program.  

Congress allocates funding to tribes on a year-to-year basis under the block grant program, but tribes are left in the dark regarding the amount of money they will receive the following year. The funding is determined by a specific formula generated by the block grant program to ensure each tribe receives funding for affordable housing projects, which can vary from rental assistance programs to housing rehabilitation and first-time homebuyer support.  

The formula looks at a tribal community’s housing shortage, the percentage of low-income residents, the number of homeless people and how many housing units were built before NAHASDA began in 1996. Tribes are given more funds when they renovate pre-1996 houses instead of creating new housing, which incentivizes maintaining older buildings. Under the formula, each tribe receives a different amount of money based on the estimated need, but rarely covers the housing shortage and makes it difficult to plan long-term projects. 

McGill offered a specific example. “We have a tribe in Oroville called the Berry Creek Rancheria,” she said. “They have 626 tribal members, and they receive $655,441 a year. If you are doing new developments only, you could only build one and a half houses. They currently have a housing shortage of 311 units, so that would mean it would take about 300 years just using that allocation to meet their housing shortage.”  

Despite the crucial need for affordable housing, it wasn’t until 2014 that tribes became eligible for the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, a federal program that awards tax credits to developers in exchange for agreeing to reserve a certain number of rent-controlled units. And it wasn’t until 2016 that tribes could access the Home Investment Partnership Programs (HOME), a federal and state program that provides affordable housing grants to local governments. 

McGill said that in addition to receiving insufficient funds, tribes often must litigate several year-long agreements with state and federal agencies to reach a consensus on how a housing project should be constructed. For many of these projects, there have been disagreements between tribes and government entities on how much a project should cost, its accessibility, its quality and the tribe’s cultural needs, often reducing a tribe’s decision-making power on how the funding should be used. 

McGill gave another example of how affordable housing programs often undermine the projects that tribal communities can complete. She said that under the HOME program, NCIHA received a grant in 2018 of $920,000 to build new housing for the chronically homeless members of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians. But by the time NCIHA reached a unanimous agreement with the Department of Housing and Community Development, five years had flown by, and NCIHA needed an additional $1.9 million in funds to build because of increasing construction costs.   

“Between 2018 and 2023, project costs had tripled,” McGill said. “HOME wasn’t created for tribes, and there were requirements that weren’t applicable to tribes because of their sovereignty or because the project was located on trust land. We had to negotiate all new terms.”  

Recent policy changes make room for tribal communities’ affordable housing needs

Despite these challenges, there have been crucial policy changes in the last five years that have created more opportunities for tribal housing.  

In 2019, California lawmakers passed AB 1010, a milestone for state tribes. AB 1010 allowed tribes to apply for all affordable housing programs available under state funding, whether the programs were designed for Native Americans or not, creating a larger pathway for tribes to meet their affordable housing goals.   

AB 1010 also reinstated the California Indian Assistance Program, which helps tribes navigate available funding from state and federal grants. 

In September, SB 1187 was signed into law, which created the first-ever affordable housing grant program with a fixed percentage of government funds reserved for low-cost housing on tribal lands.  

Under SB 1187, the state legislature must annually deposit funds into the Tribal Housing Grant Program Trust Fund. The money will come from four other housing programs: the Multifamily Housing Program, the Infill Infrastructure Grant Program, the Veterans Housing and Homelessness Prevention Program and the Joe Serna, Jr. Farmworker Housing Grant Program. The bill ensures that 10% of funds set aside for those four programs will now be funneled into the Tribal Housing Trust Fund. 

Senator McGuire said that to address the high number of Native Americans in the state’s homeless population, changes in policy should come first. 

“Housing insecurity is a public health crisis in many tribal communities,” said McGuire. “This measure will advance desperately needed affordable housing funding that meets the unique needs of tribal communities.” 

In a recent letter, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors praised Newsom and McGuire for creating legislation that supports tribal housing. The board stated that the new law will help Native Americans achieve restorative justice. 

“This isn’t another state program; it’s a step towards restorative justice for tribal Californians, rectifying historical displacement from ancestral lands, and providing tribes with a flexible resource to meet their housing needs,” the board wrote. “SB 1187 is a great start towards helping tribes reach parity when it comes to these issues.”  

For McGill, she emphasized that SB 1187 is the first tribal housing legislation truly created “by tribes, for tribes.”  

“This was such an important bill, and it was a huge need. We made the modifications needed, Senator McGuire agreed, and he kept the fight,” McGill said.  “We made it through the Senate, the Assembly, appropriations and now the bill is signed. We all came together and stayed together and now we have SB 1187. We didn’t give up.”