Kent Sievers for the New York Times
SMART GROWTH - Families are becoming first-time homeowners in a self-contained, pedestrian-friendly village rising on an isolated reservation in Winnebago, Neb. By BRADFORD McKEE
Published: September 30, 2004
PROGRESS has a way of backfiring on the Winnebago tribe of Nebraska. Over the past decade tribal businesses have flourished where poverty had long been the rule. Many of the 2,600 people living amid the rolling green and tan fields of the 120,000-acre Winnebago Indian Reservation have found jobs and begun to make decent money. But some of those same people, finding that their higher incomes made them ineligible for public housing, ended up leaving the reservation because there was no place else there for them to live.
The tribe's most prominent business leader, Lance Morgan, figured it would literally take a new village to bring the tribe together again.
So far, Ho-Chunk Village, just north of town, is a mostly blank slate on which the tribe maps its destiny. A grid of chalk-colored streets is forming on a 38-acre slope of oat grass. Besides an office building and a new Dollar General store near the main road, there are 4 houses at the property's back edge, the first of 110 planned.
"Our original theory was, hey, let's fight the poverty in this community," said Mr. Morgan, a thickset 36-year-old with an adolescent brightness about him. "If we fought poverty, then everything would take care of itself." It did not work out that way.
Since 1994 Mr. Morgan has been chief executive of Ho-Chunk Inc., which the tribe chartered to diversify its economy beyond a modest casino. Today the company includes construction, retail and banking businesses. Tribal unemployment has dropped to 24 percent, from 66 percent in 1998. But a severe housing shortage began to splinter the tribe.
"I thought we were about to suffer from our own success," Mr. Morgan said.
Grass-roots housing development is relatively new to Indian tribes, most of which depend on government housing, said Gary L. Gordon, executive director of the housing council. "Overcrowding is more of an issue in Indian country than homelessness," he said, adding that commonly on reservations 20 to 25 people share one house.
But with help from federal agencies and foundations, single family homes, a symbol of prosperity most Americans take for granted, are being developed on reservations throughout the country.
In all, about 120 tribes are building new housing to ease shortages. This summer the Catawba tribe of South Carolina completed a 124-unit housing development near Rock Hill for $11.3 million. In Montana, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are finishing redevelopment of a derelict mobile home park on the Flathead Reservation.
In mid-September the National American Indian Housing Council released a report on the health risks that overcrowded housing on reservations poses to children, including infectious diseases and breathing problems from tobacco smoke. A report last year by the federal Commission on Civil Rights cited an immediate need for 200,000 housing units for Indian families.
In Winnebago about one-third of households are overcrowded, including the home of David and Robin Redhorn. They live in town with their three children in a house they share with Mrs. Redhorn's sister, her husband and their child. "There's about eight of us," Mr. Redhorn said. "It's kind of crowded, but we're managing."
In October the Redhorn family will become the second to move to Ho-Chunk Village. With guidance from a 40-hour home buyer course offered by the housing authority, Mr. Redhorn, who works at the Heritage Food Store in town, paid off overdue debts to improve his credit record, which qualified him for financial assistance.
All Winnebago families are eligible for $15,000 in down payment assistance from Ho-Chunk Inc.'s nonprofit arm for houses on the reservation if they complete the course. Families earning $45,200 or less may qualify for an additional $5,000 from the housing authority.
"We'll have a three-bedroom house, a full basement with a two-car garage, central air and central heat," Mr. Redhorn said. "And a fireplace so we can have a real Christmas. I'm kind of fired up about this."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/30/garden/30WINN.html?oref=login&th
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