Post by blackcrowheart on Mar 20, 2007 13:19:02 GMT -5
Lumbee tackle housing woes
Tribe presses bid for federal money
www.newsobserver.com/102/story/529764.html
<http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/529764.html>
[http://www.newsobserver.com/media/2007/01/07/02/reg-1511036-964903.embe\
dded.jpg]
Vera Hunt, 84, walks through the new apartment complex the Lumbee built
for impoverished elderly.
Staff Photos by Ted Richardson
<http://www.newsobserver.com/859/v-pop_gallery/gallery/529765.html>
According to histories compiled by the Lumbee Regional Development
Association and the Lumbee Tribal Council, the Lumbee are the largest
non-reservation tribe in the United States and ninth-largest in the
country. Present-day Lumbee are descended mainly from Cheraw and related
Siouan-speaking groups that have lived in what is now Robeson County
since at least 1724.
In 1835, North Carolina legislators amended the state constitution,
rescinding the citizenship rights of Native Americans and free blacks.
After the Civil War, those rights were reinstated. In 1885, the
legislature recognized the Indians of Robeson County as Croatan and, two
years later, established the Croatan Indian Normal School, which today
is the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
In 1911, the General Assembly changed the tribe's name to Indians of
Robeson County. In 1952, tribal members voted to change the name again,
to Lumbee, after the Lumber River, which runs through their homeland.
The state legislature voted to refer to the tribe by that name in 1953.
The Lumbee were officially recognized by the U.S. government in 1956,
but because of fears of funding shortfalls, language was added to the
bill to exclude the tribe from programs and funding administered by the
federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The tribe has made repeated attempts through various means over the
years to get standing that would entitle members to the same benefits as
the other 560 federally recognized tribes. Bills introduced in the U.S.
House and Senate in 2005 had bipartisan support but were never put to a
vote; they expired when the session ended Dec. 31.
The tribe is expected to continue to push for full federal recognition.
Martha Quillin, Staff Writer
<http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/529764.html> FAIRMONT - Vera
Hunt is 84 years old and ready, she says, to go to her heavenly home. In
the meantime, she is living in what looks to her like the finest home on
Earth.
"The Lord has brought me from a mighty long ways," she told a crowd
gathered one shining cold November morning under the pavilion outside
her subsidized apartment. It was a dedication ceremony celebrating the
completion of 31 units in Heritage Haven, an apartment complex built on
the site of a former landfill by the Lumbee Indian tribe for its
impoverished elderly.
In building the one- and two-bedroom apartments -- some of whose
residents have never before had reliable heat or indoor plumbing -- the
tribe itself has come a mighty long ways.
Two decades ago, the Lumbee tribe, the largest tribe east of the
Mississippi River, was a fractious, disorganized group with a loose
system of government, limited ability to deliver services and little
accountability for what it did provide. It was not until 2001 that the
tribe formed a council, wrote a constitution, elected a chairman, hired
an administrator and set up committees to oversee tribal issues, all in
the hope of increasing the tribe's chance of getting full recognition
from the U.S. government.
Among the prerequisites for recognition by the federal Bureau of Indian
Affairs are proof of self-governance and political authority.
The Lumbee were recognized by Congress in 1956, but Indian Affairs was
already strapped for money and stipulated that the tribe -- because of
its large size -- be specifically excluded from programs and funding the
bureau administered. Over the years, that has cost the Lumbee many
millions of dollars in assistance with such things as business loans,
health care and education.
In addition, with full federal recognition, the tribe could be eligible
to operate a casino, which could provide a huge source of income.
The tribe has repeatedly petitioned to change the law, but full
recognition has never come. The most recent bills before Congress died
without a vote Dec. 31.
Like other Indian populations in the state and across the country, the
Lumbee continue to have serious health issues -- especially diabetes --
excessive high-school dropout rates and higher-than-average unemployment
and poverty rates. But even without a law giving the Lumbee the rights
and privileges they were denied in 1956, the tribe has evolved in recent
years into a major source of housing assistance in a county that badly
needs it.
This fiscal year, the tribe's budget totals just more than $15 million,
of which $14.4 million comes from HUD block grants and loan guarantees
created by the 1996 Native American Housing Assistance and Self
Determination Act, or NAHASDA. The tribe is using the money to
rehabilitate dilapidated housing, refinance high-interest loans on
existing homes, help with down payments and build housing such as
Heritage Haven.
In addition, with help from the College of Design at N.C. State
University, the tribe now has three sets of blueprints tribal members
can use to build affordable single-family homes. The blueprints take
into account cultural preferences toward open spaces and Eastern North
Carolina-style farmhouses.
"If we can do this without federal recognition, imagine what we could do
if we had it," said Tribal Council member Larece Hunt at the Heritage
Haven dedication.
The tribe has dreamed for decades of what it might do for its 56,000
members (more than 47,000 of whom live in Robeson and neighboring Hoke,
Cumberland and Scotland counties) if it had the benefit of full federal
recognition.
For years, the tribe struggled even to maintain a list of tribal
enrollment. Its government was the Lumbee Regional Development
Association, which ran day-care centers for low-income families and
represented the tribe in the National Congress of American Indians, but
was often criticized for lack of financial oversight.
Today, the association is a separate agency oriented to social services.
The tribal government has a busy office in rented space in a strip
shopping center in Pembroke, where a receptionist greets visitors and a
wall-mounted television is tuned to CNN. It has a staff of four dozen
people.
Bosco Locklear's desk in the tribal office is stacked with file folders
that tell the sad story of Lumbee housing. Locklear, who oversees the
housing rehabilitation program, has a waiting list of 1,195 homes in
need of major repair whose owners can't afford to fix them.
"The majority of our clients' income is less than $1,000 a month,"
Locklear said, flipping open a folder with color photographs of a home
ridden with termites where the toilet is a 5-gallon bucket. The owner is
a 70-year-old woman.
"She's been on the waiting list since 2000 or 2001," Locklear said with
a weary sigh. "But that's better than it used to be. There were 3,000 on
the waiting list at one time."
Since the Lumbee began receiving money from the federal housing program,
Locklear said, the tribe has rehabbed 800 homes. He can spend up to
$10,000 per house on emergency repairs to correct structural damage and
threats to health and safety, and up to $20,000 for more extensive fixes
that can include painting and replacing windows. Of the $14.4 million
HUD will give the tribe this year, $4.1 million will go to rehab
projects. Locklear guesses he could spend twice that.
A large part of the problem, Locklear said, is that 43 percent of the
Lumbee in the tribe's four-county service area live in mobile homes,
many of them deteriorating. Lacking a credit history, or having damaged
credit because of spotty employment, tribal members often buy the homes
at high interest rates.
And unlike a stick-built home, a mobile home depreciates, so by the time
it is paid for, the owner may have paid far more than it is worth. If it
needs work, the family has no money for repairs and no equity to borrow
against or pass down as an inheritance, contributing to a cycle of
poverty.
Tribal leaders see home ownership as a first step in the accumulation of
wealth for the Lumbee, a way for individuals and families to rise out of
poverty. In turn, they say, the tribe as a whole would be less of a
drain on public resources.
The main opposition to full federal recognition for the Lumbee has come
from other tribes reluctant to share the Bureau of Indian Affairs'
limited pot of federal money with them, especially in view of the
tribe's size and its relative neediness. Robeson County, which is about
one-third Indian, has the fourth-highest poverty rate of North
Carolina's 100 counties.
Meanwhile, tribal officials are particularly pleased that the federal
housing money, even though limited, enables them to improve the lives of
the people they call their "blessed elders."
"I ain't never stayed in a good house until they fixed this one," said
Ethel Locklear, 73, of the home where she and her husband, Chancey, live
near the rural Hoke County community of Dundarrach. The couple paid $750
for the all-wooden, turn-of-the-20th- century house decades ago, and
another $1,000 to move it to their 2 secluded acres a quarter-mile from
the nearest paved road.
"We like to froze in this house," Ethel Locklear recalled. With only a
wood stove for heat, and with no insulation and windows that rattled
when the winter wind blew, "I slept in my shoes. I slept in stockings.
And pants. And my blouse.
"You couldn't get warm in this house."
Early last year, the tribe contracted to make repairs on the Locklears'
home: new roof, insulation, exterior siding and thermal-pane windows all
the way around. Workers updated the bathroom and installed vinyl
flooring in the kitchen.
Locklear opens the door to the Wonderwood stove and wedges in another
stick. The stove is still the only source of heat and the reason the
couple sleep in the den from autumn to spring. But now, the heat stays
in the house instead of leaking out the windows. It is at least 80
degrees in the room.
Tribe presses bid for federal money
www.newsobserver.com/102/story/529764.html
<http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/529764.html>
[http://www.newsobserver.com/media/2007/01/07/02/reg-1511036-964903.embe\
dded.jpg]
Vera Hunt, 84, walks through the new apartment complex the Lumbee built
for impoverished elderly.
Staff Photos by Ted Richardson
<http://www.newsobserver.com/859/v-pop_gallery/gallery/529765.html>
According to histories compiled by the Lumbee Regional Development
Association and the Lumbee Tribal Council, the Lumbee are the largest
non-reservation tribe in the United States and ninth-largest in the
country. Present-day Lumbee are descended mainly from Cheraw and related
Siouan-speaking groups that have lived in what is now Robeson County
since at least 1724.
In 1835, North Carolina legislators amended the state constitution,
rescinding the citizenship rights of Native Americans and free blacks.
After the Civil War, those rights were reinstated. In 1885, the
legislature recognized the Indians of Robeson County as Croatan and, two
years later, established the Croatan Indian Normal School, which today
is the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
In 1911, the General Assembly changed the tribe's name to Indians of
Robeson County. In 1952, tribal members voted to change the name again,
to Lumbee, after the Lumber River, which runs through their homeland.
The state legislature voted to refer to the tribe by that name in 1953.
The Lumbee were officially recognized by the U.S. government in 1956,
but because of fears of funding shortfalls, language was added to the
bill to exclude the tribe from programs and funding administered by the
federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The tribe has made repeated attempts through various means over the
years to get standing that would entitle members to the same benefits as
the other 560 federally recognized tribes. Bills introduced in the U.S.
House and Senate in 2005 had bipartisan support but were never put to a
vote; they expired when the session ended Dec. 31.
The tribe is expected to continue to push for full federal recognition.
Martha Quillin, Staff Writer
<http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/529764.html> FAIRMONT - Vera
Hunt is 84 years old and ready, she says, to go to her heavenly home. In
the meantime, she is living in what looks to her like the finest home on
Earth.
"The Lord has brought me from a mighty long ways," she told a crowd
gathered one shining cold November morning under the pavilion outside
her subsidized apartment. It was a dedication ceremony celebrating the
completion of 31 units in Heritage Haven, an apartment complex built on
the site of a former landfill by the Lumbee Indian tribe for its
impoverished elderly.
In building the one- and two-bedroom apartments -- some of whose
residents have never before had reliable heat or indoor plumbing -- the
tribe itself has come a mighty long ways.
Two decades ago, the Lumbee tribe, the largest tribe east of the
Mississippi River, was a fractious, disorganized group with a loose
system of government, limited ability to deliver services and little
accountability for what it did provide. It was not until 2001 that the
tribe formed a council, wrote a constitution, elected a chairman, hired
an administrator and set up committees to oversee tribal issues, all in
the hope of increasing the tribe's chance of getting full recognition
from the U.S. government.
Among the prerequisites for recognition by the federal Bureau of Indian
Affairs are proof of self-governance and political authority.
The Lumbee were recognized by Congress in 1956, but Indian Affairs was
already strapped for money and stipulated that the tribe -- because of
its large size -- be specifically excluded from programs and funding the
bureau administered. Over the years, that has cost the Lumbee many
millions of dollars in assistance with such things as business loans,
health care and education.
In addition, with full federal recognition, the tribe could be eligible
to operate a casino, which could provide a huge source of income.
The tribe has repeatedly petitioned to change the law, but full
recognition has never come. The most recent bills before Congress died
without a vote Dec. 31.
Like other Indian populations in the state and across the country, the
Lumbee continue to have serious health issues -- especially diabetes --
excessive high-school dropout rates and higher-than-average unemployment
and poverty rates. But even without a law giving the Lumbee the rights
and privileges they were denied in 1956, the tribe has evolved in recent
years into a major source of housing assistance in a county that badly
needs it.
This fiscal year, the tribe's budget totals just more than $15 million,
of which $14.4 million comes from HUD block grants and loan guarantees
created by the 1996 Native American Housing Assistance and Self
Determination Act, or NAHASDA. The tribe is using the money to
rehabilitate dilapidated housing, refinance high-interest loans on
existing homes, help with down payments and build housing such as
Heritage Haven.
In addition, with help from the College of Design at N.C. State
University, the tribe now has three sets of blueprints tribal members
can use to build affordable single-family homes. The blueprints take
into account cultural preferences toward open spaces and Eastern North
Carolina-style farmhouses.
"If we can do this without federal recognition, imagine what we could do
if we had it," said Tribal Council member Larece Hunt at the Heritage
Haven dedication.
The tribe has dreamed for decades of what it might do for its 56,000
members (more than 47,000 of whom live in Robeson and neighboring Hoke,
Cumberland and Scotland counties) if it had the benefit of full federal
recognition.
For years, the tribe struggled even to maintain a list of tribal
enrollment. Its government was the Lumbee Regional Development
Association, which ran day-care centers for low-income families and
represented the tribe in the National Congress of American Indians, but
was often criticized for lack of financial oversight.
Today, the association is a separate agency oriented to social services.
The tribal government has a busy office in rented space in a strip
shopping center in Pembroke, where a receptionist greets visitors and a
wall-mounted television is tuned to CNN. It has a staff of four dozen
people.
Bosco Locklear's desk in the tribal office is stacked with file folders
that tell the sad story of Lumbee housing. Locklear, who oversees the
housing rehabilitation program, has a waiting list of 1,195 homes in
need of major repair whose owners can't afford to fix them.
"The majority of our clients' income is less than $1,000 a month,"
Locklear said, flipping open a folder with color photographs of a home
ridden with termites where the toilet is a 5-gallon bucket. The owner is
a 70-year-old woman.
"She's been on the waiting list since 2000 or 2001," Locklear said with
a weary sigh. "But that's better than it used to be. There were 3,000 on
the waiting list at one time."
Since the Lumbee began receiving money from the federal housing program,
Locklear said, the tribe has rehabbed 800 homes. He can spend up to
$10,000 per house on emergency repairs to correct structural damage and
threats to health and safety, and up to $20,000 for more extensive fixes
that can include painting and replacing windows. Of the $14.4 million
HUD will give the tribe this year, $4.1 million will go to rehab
projects. Locklear guesses he could spend twice that.
A large part of the problem, Locklear said, is that 43 percent of the
Lumbee in the tribe's four-county service area live in mobile homes,
many of them deteriorating. Lacking a credit history, or having damaged
credit because of spotty employment, tribal members often buy the homes
at high interest rates.
And unlike a stick-built home, a mobile home depreciates, so by the time
it is paid for, the owner may have paid far more than it is worth. If it
needs work, the family has no money for repairs and no equity to borrow
against or pass down as an inheritance, contributing to a cycle of
poverty.
Tribal leaders see home ownership as a first step in the accumulation of
wealth for the Lumbee, a way for individuals and families to rise out of
poverty. In turn, they say, the tribe as a whole would be less of a
drain on public resources.
The main opposition to full federal recognition for the Lumbee has come
from other tribes reluctant to share the Bureau of Indian Affairs'
limited pot of federal money with them, especially in view of the
tribe's size and its relative neediness. Robeson County, which is about
one-third Indian, has the fourth-highest poverty rate of North
Carolina's 100 counties.
Meanwhile, tribal officials are particularly pleased that the federal
housing money, even though limited, enables them to improve the lives of
the people they call their "blessed elders."
"I ain't never stayed in a good house until they fixed this one," said
Ethel Locklear, 73, of the home where she and her husband, Chancey, live
near the rural Hoke County community of Dundarrach. The couple paid $750
for the all-wooden, turn-of-the-20th- century house decades ago, and
another $1,000 to move it to their 2 secluded acres a quarter-mile from
the nearest paved road.
"We like to froze in this house," Ethel Locklear recalled. With only a
wood stove for heat, and with no insulation and windows that rattled
when the winter wind blew, "I slept in my shoes. I slept in stockings.
And pants. And my blouse.
"You couldn't get warm in this house."
Early last year, the tribe contracted to make repairs on the Locklears'
home: new roof, insulation, exterior siding and thermal-pane windows all
the way around. Workers updated the bathroom and installed vinyl
flooring in the kitchen.
Locklear opens the door to the Wonderwood stove and wedges in another
stick. The stove is still the only source of heat and the reason the
couple sleep in the den from autumn to spring. But now, the heat stays
in the house instead of leaking out the windows. It is at least 80
degrees in the room.