Lumbee tackle housing woes

Tribe presses bid for federal money

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.