Tribal communities welcome federal relief funds to help ease housing issues

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Tribal¹ communities welcome federal relief funds to help ease housing issues

Transcript²

Tribal housing has been underfunded for decades. With pandemic relief funding, tribes now say they should be able to build as many homes in just a few years as they have in the last 25.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Affordable³ housing is in short supply on this country's Indian reservations, just as it is just about everywhere else. There's a big federal block grant for tribal housing, but it's never been enough to meet the need. Funding has been essentially⁴ flat for decades until now. It's growing because of federal pandemic relief dollars. Montana Public Radio's Freddy Monares reports from one of seven reservations in that state.

FREDDY MONARES, BYLINE⁵: A 2017 federal assessment⁶ of housing needs for American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian people found that reservations need 68,000 new homes to eliminate overcrowding and to replace units that are inadequate⁷. Sarah Saadian, vice⁸ president of public policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition⁹, says that number is likely an undercount.

SARAH SAADIAN: But based on the numbers that exist, we see very consistently that Native Americans have some of the worst housing needs in the U.S.

MONARES: Fifty-four-year-old Tyrone Burke lives that reality on the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe's reservation in Montana. He was couch surfing with relatives until September, when a space opened at the tribal housing authorities transitional living center. He rolls his wheelchair down a ramp¹⁰ to the door of his living unit. It's the size of a studio apartment.

TYRONE BURKE: Like I said, for family get-togethers, this wouldn't be very ideal, you know, but it's a space for for me and my kids, you know?

MONARES: He shares a bunk¹¹ bed with his 10-year-old son. His 11-year-old daughter has a bed to herself. There's a small kitchen and a wheelchair-accessible shower, which Burke needs after he lost a leg due to complications from diabetes¹². Burke, who's unemployed¹³ and survives on disability payments, wants a bigger place for his five other older kids to stay and visit.

BURKE: If you have a house, you can start your own memories and your own bonds with your own, you know, grandkids and nieces and nephews.

MONARES: The waiting list Burke is on to get a bigger place has roughly 200 people on it. The housing authority here manages about 500 affordable housing units total. Some were built with help from a block grant established in the 1990s that splits $650 million a year among more than 50 tribes nationwide. The amount has stayed the same for decades.

JODY PEREZ: Our pot of funds does not grow. It just shrinks. And there's no inflation accounting¹⁴ for it, so it literally¹⁵ shrinks every year.

MONARES: Jody Perez, executive director for the Salish and Kootenai Housing Authority, says in the last 25 years, block grant funding has helped the tribes here to build a total of 52 affordable housing units. She says the tribes plan to build nearly that many in just the next year or so with pandemic relief money.

PEREZ: I can't really believe Congress is allocating¹⁶ this much funding because we've never had it before.

MONARES: The National American Indian Housing Council says in the last two years, tribal housing programs have received more than $4 billion in federal funding. It's making a difference for bigger tribes, too, like the Cherokee Nation, with more than 140,000 people on its reservation in Oklahoma. Cherokee Housing Authority interim¹⁷ executive director Jerri Killer¹⁸ says the money will help wipe out the majority of the waiting lists that some 4,000 people are on for various housing programs.

JERRI KILLER: That's for, you know, housing rehab. That's helping¹⁹ with some rental²⁰ subsidies²¹. That's also building rental units. That's building replacement²² homes. That's building new construction homes.

MONARES: Killer says the housing authority plans to build a minimum of 200 homes.

KILLER: Oh, yeah, we're going now. We're rocking and rolling right now.

MONARES: Back in Montana, Tyrone Burke is hopeful. He's tried to rent a home on his own.

BURKE: For a three-bedroom that I was looking at, it with well over $1,500, $1,600 a month, you know, and it was hard for me to find a place.

MONARES: The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes plan to start building new homes with the federal relief funds this year. For NPR News, I'm Freddy Monares in Pablo, Mont.

1 tribal   

adj.部族的，种族的

参考例句：

• He became skilled in several tribal lingoes.他精通几种部族的语言。
• The country was torn apart by fierce tribal hostilities.那个国家被部落间的激烈冲突弄得四分五裂。

2 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

3 affordable   

adj.支付得起的，不太昂贵的

参考例句：

• The rent for the four-roomed house is affordable.四居室房屋的房租付得起。
• There are few affordable apartments in big cities.在大城市中没有几所公寓是便宜的。

4 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 assessment   

n.评价；评估；对财产的估价，被估定的金额

参考例句：

• This is a very perceptive assessment of the situation.这是一个对该情况的极富洞察力的评价。
• What is your assessment of the situation?你对时局的看法如何？

7 inadequate   

adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的

参考例句：

• The supply is inadequate to meet the demand.供不应求。
• She was inadequate to the demands that were made on her.她还无力满足对她提出的各项要求。

8 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

9 coalition   

n.结合体，同盟，结合，联合

参考例句：

• The several parties formed a coalition.这几个政党组成了政治联盟。
• Coalition forces take great care to avoid civilian casualties.联盟军队竭尽全力避免造成平民伤亡。

10 ramp   

n.暴怒，斜坡，坡道；vi.作恐吓姿势，暴怒，加速；vt.加速

参考例句：

• That driver drove the car up the ramp.那司机将车开上了斜坡。
• The factory don't have that capacity to ramp up.这家工厂没有能力加速生产。

11 bunk   

n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话

参考例句：

• He left his bunk and went up on deck again.他离开自己的铺位再次走到甲板上。
• Most economists think his theories are sheer bunk.大多数经济学家认为他的理论纯属胡说。

12 diabetes   

n.糖尿病

参考例句：

• In case of diabetes, physicians advise against the use of sugar.对于糖尿病患者，医生告诫他们不要吃糖。
• Diabetes is caused by a fault in the insulin production of the body.糖尿病是由体內胰岛素分泌失调引起的。

13 unemployed   

adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的

参考例句：

• There are now over four million unemployed workers in this country.这个国家现有四百万失业人员。
• The unemployed hunger for jobs.失业者渴望得到工作。

14 accounting   

n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表

参考例句：

• A job fell vacant in the accounting department.财会部出现了一个空缺。
• There's an accounting error in this entry.这笔账目里有差错。

15 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

16 allocating   

分配，分派( allocate的现在分词 )； 把…拨给

参考例句：

• Administrative practice generally follows the judicial model in allocating burdens of proof. 在分配举证责任方面，行政实践通常遵循司法模式。
• A cyclical multiplexing technique, allocating resources in fixed-time slices. 以固定的时间片分配资源的循环复用技术。

17 interim   

adj.暂时的，临时的；n.间歇，过渡期间

参考例句：

• The government is taking interim measures to help those in immediate need.政府正在采取临时措施帮助那些有立即需要的人。
• It may turn out to be an interim technology.这可能只是个过渡技术。

18 killer   

n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者

参考例句：

• Heart attacks have become Britain's No.1 killer disease.心脏病已成为英国的头号致命疾病。
• The bulk of the evidence points to him as her killer.大量证据证明是他杀死她的。

19 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

20 rental   

n.租赁，出租，出租业

参考例句：

• The yearly rental of her house is 2400 yuan.她这房子年租金是2400元。
• We can organise car rental from Chicago O'Hare Airport.我们可以安排提供从芝加哥奥黑尔机场出发的租车服务。

21 subsidies   

n.补贴，津贴，补助金( subsidy的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• European agriculture ministers failed to break the deadlock over farm subsidies. 欧洲各国农业部长在农业补贴问题上未能打破僵局。
• Agricultural subsidies absorb about half the EU's income. 农业补贴占去了欧盟收入的大约一半。 来自《简明英汉词典》

22 replacement   

n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品

参考例句：

• We are hard put to find a replacement for our assistant.我们很难找到一个人来代替我们的助手。
• They put all the students through the replacement examination.他们让所有的学生参加分班考试。