Sen. Claudia Kauffman Remarks to the American Indian Housing Council
(as prepared)
May 12, 2008 Seattle, WA

Good morning! I want to thank the American Indian Housing Council and all of you for inviting me to talk with you today.

Building more affordable housing, and being able to protect what we already have, is not a Native American problem – it’s an American problem, faced by every state in the nation.

The tales of success or failure from state to state and within tribes vary, but it’s an issue affecting more families every day. Providing housing within reach of working families is starting to gain real urgency – it’s about time.

Here in Washington, we’ve had successes for affordable housing. During the past legislative session that adjourned in March, we made progress on a few important areas from each end of the housing spectrum – from homelessness to fighting foreclosures.

On one end of this spectrum, we directed an emergency appropriation of $6 million dollars this year to the Washington Families Fund – giving 1000 more families a place to call home, rather than under a bridge or at a shelter.

The families fund is a public-private partnership success story. The program looks at the whole picture of housing and homelessness. I think everyone in this room knows that there are many interconnected factors in getting working families decent places to live – or the complicated sets of events and reasons why families must turn to their last option of homelessness.

In fact, much like the emergency appropriation we passed this year, the Families Fund itself was an emergency move in 2004 to counteract thousands of homeless or at-risk families being turned away from housing and other social services.

Between 2001 and 2004, the number of families turned away increased 18 percent in our state and the length of shelter stays were increasing as well. By using a financing model that capitalizes both private and public funding we move families from homelessness to self-sufficiency. I’m pleased to say that this is a success story, and that I was able to help secure the additional funding for them this year.

We also passed a measure creating a program to purchase property in rapidly developing areas to protect or build affordable housing or community facilities. As some of our neighborhoods go through rapid gentrification, we need to protect the homes of families, rather than see them move to the streets or to other places where the social support services they critically need simply don’t exist.

And as the price of materials and construction costs continue to rise, the ways in which we’re funding and financing affordable housing must be nimble and structured well enough to move with the market trends. I introduced legislation this year to do just that.

The legislature passed my plan increasing the debt limit of the Washington Housing Finance commission by $500 million dollars as another move to create more affordable housing and keep pace with not only construction costs, but the need for more housing units.

We can’t just walk away from these successes – we have to keep up during every legislative session, or we’ll fall behind very quickly.

So those pieces are part of our work in Washington state to ensure that affordable housing is within reach of working families, and a broad overview of what some of our key affordable housing programs are. But we’re all here today to talk about more than that.

We all know this basic fact: Native American people are drastically disadvantaged when it comes to owning or renting a decent place to call home, and it’s a huge problem.

We have the lowest home ownership rate of any ethnic group in the country – half the rate of the population as a whole. And with the barriers that many Indians face, our burdens are greater. For many, it’s like being ten steps behind the rest of society. We have to continue to build on making up for the barriers that we face.

In many American families, the family home is inherited through generations. This is simply not true for many Native Americans. In many cases, there isn’t a home to inherit in the first place, for understandable reasons. It’s an enormous challenge to build wealth across generations.

So Native Americans have to get smart about solving our Housing crisis. And we are.

One of the biggest barriers we faced for many years was our lack of access to capital and the world of financial products. Building housing is expensive and there’s no difference in price between on the reservation and off.

All of these issues are tied together, and there are many barriers. But we are making progress.

Many tribes have the cash today that even ten years ago, they didn’t have. Tribes are more sophisticated. These tribes have not only learned how to play in the economic marketplace, they’ve learned how to win.

There’s a growing middle-class trend on the reservations. Those are the people who now are able to access home ownership opportunities on the reservations. But even now, that middle class on our reservations is still miniscule in comparison to the non-Indian population, and that’s the core reason behind this work.

There just isn’t enough building happening on the reservations.

So as the financial position of tribes and members begin or continue to improve, it’s clear that we need two things in Indian Country: More rental housing options and more home ownership programs.

The federal government needs to continue supporting the Section 184 program – one of the most effective tools we have right now to build homeownership rates and create equity in Indian Country. The government has increased funding for Section 184 in the last few years, and the results have been dramatic – in 2007, almost 1200 loans were guaranteed. Just a few years ago, that number was in the two-hundreds.

But we also know that more investment is critical, so Congress and HUD need to continue the expansion and funding of Section 184 so that community building and wealth building can continue happening on the reservations, and state governments need to keep a watchful eye and ready hand to create programs that make real differences for our urban and suburban areas outside of the reservations. We also can’t let the broader housing market slump also turn off investment on our reservations. We can’t afford to stop making progress, or we’ll fall further behind.

On the state level, I will continue my commitment to affordable housing, and at the federal level, we all have to continue making the case for continued investment in Indian Country for Indian families.

Thank you all for your work for our Native American communities, and thanks again for having me here today.

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