    [House Hearing, 117 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                      NAHASDA REAUTHORIZATION: ADDRESSING
                         HISTORIC DISINVESTMENT AND THE
                         ONGOING PLIGHT OF THE FREEDMEN
                         IN NATIVE AMERICAN COMMUNITIES

    =======================================================================

                                 HYBRID HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                            SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOUSING,
                             COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT,
                                 AND INSURANCE

                                     OF THE

                        COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES

                         U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                 JULY 27, 2021

                                   __________

           Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services

                               Serial No. 117-44

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                  __________

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    45-861 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2021

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                     HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES

                     MAXINE WATERS, California, Chairwoman

    CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York         PATRICK McHENRY, North Carolina,
    NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ, New York             Ranking Member
    BRAD SHERMAN, California             FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma
    GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York           BILL POSEY, Florida
    DAVID SCOTT, Georgia                 BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri
    AL GREEN, Texas                      BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan
    EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri            ANN WAGNER, Missouri
    ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              ANDY BARR, Kentucky
    JIM A. HIMES, Connecticut            ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas
    BILL FOSTER, Illinois                FRENCH HILL, Arkansas
    JOYCE BEATTY, Ohio                   TOM EMMER, Minnesota
    JUAN VARGAS, California              LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
    JOSH GOTTHEIMER, New Jersey          BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
    VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas              ALEXANDER X. MOONEY, West Virginia
    AL LAWSON, Florida                   WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio
    MICHAEL SAN NICOLAS, Guam            TED BUDD, North Carolina
    CINDY AXNE, Iowa                     DAVID KUSTOFF, Tennessee
    SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                TREY HOLLINGSWORTH, Indiana
    AYANNA PRESSLEY, Massachusetts       ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
    RITCHIE TORRES, New York             JOHN ROSE, Tennessee
    STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts      BRYAN STEIL, Wisconsin
    ALMA ADAMS, North Carolina           LANCE GOODEN, Texas
    RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan              WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina
    MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania         VAN TAYLOR, Texas
    ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, New York   PETE SESSIONS, Texas
    JESUS ``CHUY'' GARCIA, Illinois
    SYLVIA GARCIA, Texas
    NIKEMA WILLIAMS, Georgia
    JAKE AUCHINCLOSS, Massachusetts

                       Charla Ouertatani, Staff Director
                      Subcommittee on Housing, Community
                           Development, and Insurance

                      EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri, Chairman

    NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ, New York         FRENCH HILL, Arkansas, Ranking
    BRAD SHERMAN, California                 Member
    JOYCE BEATTY, Ohio                   BILL POSEY, Florida
    AL GREEN, Texas                      BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan
    VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas              LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
    CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York         TREY HOLLINGSWORTH, Indiana
    JUAN VARGAS, California              JOHN ROSE, Tennessee
    AL LAWSON, Florida                   BRYAN STEIL, Wisconsin, Vice
    CINDY AXNE, Iowa                         Ranking Member
    RITCHIE TORRES, New York             LANCE GOODEN, Texas
                                         VAN TAYLOR, Texas

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page
    Hearing held on:
        July 27, 2021................................................     1
    Appendix:
        July 27, 2021................................................    27

                                   WITNESSES
                             Tuesday, July 27, 2021

    Brossy, Jackson, Executive Director, Native CDFI Network (NCN)...    11
    Hoskin, Hon. Chuck, Jr., Principal Chief, Cherokee Nation........     4
    Kolerok, Chris, Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs,
      Cook Inlet Housing Authority...................................    10
    Vann, Marilyn, President, Descendants of Freedmen of the Five
      Civilized Tribes Association...................................     8
    Walters, Anthony, Executive Director, National American Indian
      Housing Council (NAIHC)........................................     6

                                    APPENDIX

    Prepared statements:
        Brossy, Jackson..............................................    28
        Hoskin, Hon, Chuck, Jr.......................................    32
        Kolerok, Chris...............................................    38
        Vann, Marilyn................................................    44
        Walters, Anthony.............................................    53

                  Additional Material Submitted for the Record

    Cleaver, Hon. Emanuel
        Written statement of the Muscogee Creek Indian Freedmen Band.    64
        Written statement of Damario Solomon Simmons, Esq............    76
    Hoskin, Hon, Chuck, Jr.:
        Written responses to questions for the record submitted by
          Chairwoman Waters..........................................    86
    Kolerok, Chris:
        Written responses to questions for the record submitted by
          Chairwoman Waters..........................................    89
        Written responses to questions for the record submitted by
          Representative Posey.......................................    91
    Vann, Marilyn:
        Written responses to questions for the record submitted by
          Chairwoman Waters, including attachments...................    94
        Written responses to questions for the record submitted by
          Representative Posey.......................................   103
    Young, Hon. Don:
        Letter of introduction for his constitutent witness, Chris
          Kolerok....................................................   105

                      NAHASDA REAUTHORIZATION: ADDRESSING
                         HISTORIC DISINVESTMENT AND THE
                       ONGOING PLIGHT OF THE FREEDMEN IN
                          NATIVE AMERICAN COMMUNITIES

                                  ----------

                             Tuesday, July 27, 2021

                 U.S. House of Representatives,
                               Subcommittee on Housing,
                                 Community Development,
                                         and Insurance,
                               Committee on Financial Services,
                                                       Washington, D.C.
        The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:16 p.m., in
    room 2128, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Emanuel Cleaver
    [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
        Members present: Representatives Cleaver, Vargas; Hill,
    Rose, Steil, and Taylor.
        Ex officio present: Representative Waters.
        Chairman Cleaver. The Subcommittee on Housing, Community
    Development, and Insurance will come to order. Without
    objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess of the
    subcommittee at any time. Also, without objection, members of
    the full Financial Services Committee who are not members of
    this subcommittee are authorized to participate in the hearing
    today.
        Today's hearing is entitled, ``NAHASDA Reauthorization:
    Addressing Historic Disinvestment and the Ongoing Plight of the
    Freedmen in Native American Communities.'' I now recognize
    myself for 3 minutes for an opening statement.
        The treatment of the original inhabitants of the North
    American continent has been a stain on the history of our great
    nation. The establishment and expansion of the United States
    included the seizure and forced removal of Native Americans
    from their homes, particularly under Andrew Jackson's Indian
    Removal Act.
        Subsequent legislation continued to oppress and limit the
    mobility of Native Americans. The United States signed more
    than 370 treaties, passed laws, and instituted policies that
    have come to define the special government-to-government
    relationship between the Federal and Tribal Governments, and
    obligates the Federal Government to promote the general well-
    being of Native American Tribes. Yet, the United States has
    failed to provide that assistance.
        Native American communities continue to experience
    disproportionately high poverty rates and low incomes,
    overcrowding, chronic homelessness, and a lack of basic
    utilities such as plumbing, clean drinking water, and heat, and
    face barriers to housing and community development.
        In 1996, Congress passed the Native American Housing
    Assistance and Self-Determination Act (NAHASDA), which provides
    Federal funding to Tribal areas via the Indian Housing Block
    Grant (IHBG) Program. That program is intended to support safe,
    decent, and affordable housing in Tribal areas while respecting
    Tribal sovereignty.
        Today's hearing is focused on the need to reauthorize
    NAHASDA, which is the central statutory framework through which
    the Federal Government helps Tribal Governments improve housing
    and other infrastructure.
        We are also here today to understand the history of the
    Black Native American Freedmen. If you are not familiar with
    this particular history, then I encourage you to take a good
    look, and to listen to this hearing today.
        Also, we are going to look at how certain Tribes, including
    Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole
    Nations, known as the Five Tribes, who purchased and enslaved
    people from Africa, signed a treaty agreement and abolished
    slavery by freeing any insulated individuals, and agreed to
    treat them and their lineal descendants equal to Native
    citizens.
        Today's hearing will discuss this turbulent history, and
    how Congress may be used to ensure that all federally-
    recognized Tribes will receive the support and flexibility to
    make local decisions in how they serve low-income families.
        The Chair now recognizes the ranking member of the
    subcommittee, Mr. Hill, for an opening statement.
        Mr. Hill. I thank the chairman. I thank you for holding
    this hearing today. And I thank our panelists for being with us
    today. We are here to talk about the Native American Housing
    Assistance and Self-Determination Act, that we refer to as
    NAHASDA.
        In many ways, this hearing is long overdue, and there is
    much to discuss. In fact, other than a 2017 field hearing in
    Wisconsin, held by then-Chairman Sean Duffy, this subcommittee
    has not even had a hearing on NAHASDA in 14 years, going all
    the way back to June of 2007.
        Moreover, while NAHASDA has been amended several times
    since it was enacted, it has only been reauthorized twice, once
    in 2002, and once in 2008, and the program is currently
    receiving appropriations from Congress without authorization.
    That passive level of oversight bordering on apathy is no way
    to run our government or to administer this program.
        But it is even more devastating, given the extreme level of
    present need for too many of our 570 federally-recognized
    American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes. It almost defies
    belief to witness the persistent pockets of poverty on Tribal
    lands. According to a Brookings Institution report from 2019,
    child poverty rates among American Indians and Alaska Natives
    have consistently exceeded 40 percent for the past 30 years.
    That is unacceptable to me, and I know it is to our Chair, and
    to all of the participants on our panel today, and we have to
    figure out a more effective way to combat it.
        While there are many technical questions to discuss here, I
    think it is important that we ask some bigger questions in
    order to get to the heart of the matter of these reforms, such
    as, has NAHASDA been successful in accomplishing its objective?
    How can the Tribes better leverage private capital to enhance
    their economic development opportunities? How can we better
    increase accountability for the use of NAHASDA funds, while
    maintaining the core principle of Tribal self-determination?
    After all, the worst thing anyone could take away from this
    hearing today is the notion that if we just enact a new NAHASDA
    reauthorization, all of the myriad problems and complexities in
    Indian country will simply go away. I wish that were the case,
    but life is never that simple.
        Still, anything worth doing is worth doing well, and good
    Federal policy that leads to quality economic development, and
    with hard work and diligence, economic prosperity for our
    brothers and sisters on Tribal lands is certainly worth our
    time and effort.
        Which brings me to another point about a certain level of
    inescapable irony here. Just a week ago, we had the HUD
    Secretary, Secretary Fudge, sitting in this very room,
    proclaiming that she had no idea how much COVID emergency
    rental assistance money had been approved by Congress last year
    and had gotten into the hands of distressed tenants. That quote
    came nearly 6 weeks after I wrote Secretary Fudge a letter,
    with my colleague from Illinois, Rodney Davis, and asked her,
    in June, why HUD had still not spent the CARES Act money from
    16 months ago, a letter to which she has not yet responded.
        Such a level of irresponsibility and disengagement is the
    last thing the American people want to hear right now. And now,
    one week later, we are here talking about giving HUD more
    Tribal rental assistance funding and expecting them to produce
    better and more productive results.
        Last week, some of our colleagues on the other side of the
    aisle seemed willing to let accountability slip. Well, you can
    rest assured that on this side of the aisle, we do intend to
    hold HUD and others in the government accountable on their
    COVID emergency spending and on making sure that every dollar
    authorized for NAHASDA ends up going to a worthy cause without
    any unnecessary delay.
        Our citizens who rely on programs like NAHASDA deserve that
    level of accountability from Washington, and our job at this
    hearing and in oversight is to ensure that every promise we
    make is a promise that the U.S. Government will keep.
        I thank the chairman, and I yield back.
        Chairman Cleaver. Thank you. The Chair now recognizes the
    Chair of the full Committee on Financial Services, the
    gentlewoman from California, Chairwoman Waters.
        Chairwoman Waters. Thank you, Chairman Cleaver, for
    convening this important hearing. Unequal access to housing
    sits at the heart of many racial and economic injustices across
    the country, including among Native American communities. The
    legacy of land and cultural dispossession has contributed to
    Native people experiencing, of course, high levels of chronic
    homelessness, overcrowding, and poor housing conditions.
        We also know that a key determinant of housing access on
    reservations is Tribal citizenship, which is one of the
    barriers faced by descendants of Black Native American Freedmen
    today. Many remain unaware of the ongoing plight of the
    descendants of Freedmen, whose ancestors were held as enslaved
    people by five slave-holding Tribes, including the Cherokee,
    Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole.
        Today, under their 1866 treaty agreement with the United
    States Government, these Tribes must recognize descendants of
    Freedmen as Tribal citizens and guarantee equal access to
    Federal housing resources. While many confuse this issue with
    Tribal sovereignty, I want to be clear that this is not a
    Tribal sovereignty issue. Rather, it is about honoring the
    treaty rights promised to the Freedmen and their descendants
    all those centuries ago.
        While it took decades of litigation, I am pleased that
    Chief Hoskin is leading the Cherokee Nation to honor the rights
    of Cherokee Freedmen. And other Tribes must follow suit.
        Today, we are considering my legislation to address Native
    housing needs by reauthorizing NAHASDA programs and
    guaranteeing equal access for all Tribal citizens, including
    the descendants of Freedmen.
        So, I want to thank our witnesses for their testimony. This
    is a fight that is about fairness and equality. For one
    minority group to discriminate against another minority group
    cannot stand. And as the Chair of the Financial Services
    Committee, I do not intend for it to stand.
        I yield back my time.
        Chairman Cleaver. The gentlewoman yields back.
        Today, we welcome the testimony of our distinguished panel:
    Mr. Chuck Hoskin, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation; Mr.
    Chris Kolerok, Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs
    with the Cook Inlet Housing Authority; Ms. Marilyn Vann,
    President of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized
    Tribes Association; Mr. Anthony Walters, Executive Director of
    the National American Indian Housing Council; and Mr. Jackson
    Brossy, Executive Director of the Native CDFI Network. Thank
    you all for being here.
        Witnesses are reminded that their oral testimony will be
    limited to 5 minutes. You should be able to see a timer on the
    desk in front of you that will indicate how much time you have
    left. When you have 1 minute remaining, a yellow light will
    appear, and I may tap very gently to remind you that your time
    is approaching its end. I would also ask that you be mindful of
    the timer, and when the red light appears, to quickly wrap up.
        And without objection, your written statements will be made
    a part of the record.
        Chief Hoskin, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to give
    an oral presentation of your testimony.

    STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CHUCK HOSKIN, JR., PRINCIPAL CHIEF,
                            CHEROKEE NATION

        Mr. Hoskin. ``Osiyo,'' which means, ``hello,'' in Cherokee,
    Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Hill, Chairwoman Waters, and
    distinguished members of the subcommittee. I am Chuck Hoskin,
    Jr., Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. I appreciate the
    opportunity to speak with you today.
        Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black once wrote that, ``Great
    Nations, like great men, should keep their promises.'' I want
    to share a few words with you about Cherokee Nation's work to
    meet a promise that our Nation made to the Cherokee Freedmen
    and their descendants in the Treaty of 1866. That treaty is a
    living, powerful, and foundational document, Mr. Chairman, that
    ties together all of the Cherokee Nation treaties that existed
    before it.
        When we speak of our most important treaty rights, from our
    reservation lands to our right to a delegate to the House of
    Representatives, what we are really pointing to is language in
    the Treaty of 1866 which says that all provisions of treaties
    heretofore ratified and enforced are hereby reaffirmed and
    declared to be in full force. It is a document that we, as
    Cherokees, must defend and preserve.
        Article 9 of the Treaty, Mr. Chairman, states that, ``All
    Freedmen and their descendants shall have all of the rights of
    Native Cherokees,''--not some of the rights, Mr. Chairman, but
    all of the rights of Native Cherokees. And we criticize the
    United States when it fails to live up to its treaty
    obligations, yet we have the same responsibility.
        For Cherokee Nation, the issue of Freedmen citizenship was
    really settled 155 years ago, in the treaty that we agreed to,
    that the Senate ratified, and that the President of the United
    States signed. It was settled, Mr. Chairman, by our ancestors.
    Now, we talk a great deal in Cherokee culture about respecting
    our ancestors, and seeking guidance from them. Well, they were
    clear, in 1866. They agreed, by treaty, to forever cede the
    right to exclude Freedmen and their descendants. Because of
    this, some of the actions taken by some of my predecessors to
    exclude Freedmen were void ab initio, that is, Mr. Chairman,
    void from the beginning. Quite simply, Cherokee Nation has not
    possessed the ability, since 1866, to deny full citizenship to
    Freedmen.
        The enslavement of other human beings, and the subsequent
    denial to them and their descendants of basic rights, is a
    stain on the Cherokee Nation, and it is a stain that must be
    lifted. I offer both an apology on behalf of the Cherokee
    Nation for these actions, and more importantly, Mr. Chairman, I
    offer a commitment to reconciliation.
        I am proud of the actions that we have taken over the last
    decade to begin to right these wrongs. We did not appeal the
    Federal District Court decision in the Nash case, which
    confirmed that the 1866 treaty is alive and well and preserves
    the rights of Freedmen to have all of the rights of Native
    Cherokees. The day after that historic decision in 2017, our
    own Cherokee Nation Supreme Court affirmed that same principle.
    The Nash decision is the law of the land in the Cherokee
    Nation. We immediately began processing applications for
    citizenship of Freedmen descendants, and to this day, and on an
    ongoing basis, 8,500 applications for citizenship have been
    processed.
        Earlier this year, our supreme court determined that the,
    ``by blood,'' language in our constitution was also in
    violation of the Treaty of 1866, and that that language was
    void also from its inception. Interior Secretary Haaland
    recently recognized that the Cherokee Nation had brought the
    longstanding issue of Freedmen citizenship to a close and
    fulfilled our obligations, when she approved our constitution.
        But, Mr. Chairman, we know we must do more than just
    acknowledge the legal principle of equality. We have to embrace
    the spirit of equality every day. And we know it does not
    happen overnight. For more than a century, Freedmen have been
    disconnected from the Cherokee Nation. They have not had the
    same experience as Cherokee citizens. We have to bridge that
    gap. So to that end, I issued an executive order on November
    7th of last year on equality, to reaffirm equality in the
    Cherokee Nation, to knock down barriers to access to services
    and programs if they exist.
        We have also undertaken an effort to recognize and
    celebrate Freedmen history and Freedmen art, so that we can
    celebrate our full history in the Cherokee Nation.
        I want to close by saying that the reason I am here today
    is because it is a moral imperative that I be here, and that
    the Cherokee Nation recognize equality. I am not here because
    of the 2008 NAHASDA rider that addressed the Freedmen issue. We
    took these actions because it was the right thing to do.
        I do not believe Congress should condition Federal housing
    policy and dollars on this type of public policy end. I think
    it breeds antipathy. I don't think it breeds understanding. But
    I will say this, Mr. Chairman, the Cherokee Nation is a better
    nation, and a stronger nation for having kept its promise with
    respect to equality for Freedmen.
        ``Wado,'' which means, ``thank you,'' in Cherokee.
        [The prepared statement of Chief Hoskin can be found on
    page 32 of the appendix.]
        Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Chief Hoskin. Mr. Walters, you
    are now recognized for 5 minutes.

      STATEMENT OF ANTHONY WALTERS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
                AMERICAN INDIAN HOUSING COUNCIL (NAIHC)

        Mr. Walters. Thank you, and good afternoon. I would like to
    thank Chairman Cleaver, Ranking Member Hill, Chairwoman Maxine
    Waters, and the members of the subcommittee for holding this
    hearing today and for inviting NAIHC to provide testimony
    regarding NAHASDA.
        The committee uses the term, ``historic disinvestment,'' to
    describe the state of Tribal housing programs, and this is all
    too accurate. In Fiscal Year 1998, the first year of NAHASDA,
    Tribes received $600 million. In Fiscal Year 2021, Tribes
    received only $650 million for the same block grant. Factoring
    in inflation, this small increase actually represents a cut of
    over one-third of the purchasing power of Tribal housing
    programs. If the program had kept pace with inflation, the
    Indian Housing Block Grant today should equal $994 million. In
    these same 20 years, the HUD budget has almost doubled.
        Despite the funding shortfall, Tribes support NAHASDA and
    have been successful through the program. According to HUD,
    since NAHASDA was created, Tribes have built over 40,000
    affordable housing units and rehabilitated over 100,000 more.
    Unfortunately, and also according to HUD, 68,000 units today
    are needed in Tribal communities to address substandard homes
    and to alleviated overcrowded conditions, which Native homes
    experience at nearly 8 times the national average.
        You may ask what Tribes are doing with the block grant
    funds they currently receive. We ask Tribes to do a lot with
    that funding. Tribes are tasked with maintaining tens of
    thousands of tribally-owned housing units across the country
    that have been developed over decades and which are now aging
    and in need of constant repairs. Tribe are also asked to
    provide low-income rental assistance, as well as to provide
    student housing assistance, housing and supportive services for
    veterans and elders, housing counseling services for
    prospective home buyers, and paying the operating costs for
    their own housing programs, and we also expect them to build
    new homes each year.
        Nearly 600 Tribes receive funds through NAHASDA, and they
    are expected to carry out all of these services with only $650
    million in the block grant. Approximately 400, or two-thirds of
    those Tribes, receive less than $500,000 a year to do all of
    these activities, and 175 of these grantees receive less than
    $100,000 to do these housing activities. So, it shouldn't be
    hard to see why we are falling behind.
        The United States Commission on Civil Rights issued a
    report in 2018 entitled, ``Broken Promises,'' just 3 years ago,
    which found that since 2003, when the Commission on Civil
    Rights first reported on the housing crisis in Indian country,
    the situation had deteriorated further. The report stated that
    according to HUD, between 2003 and 2015, the number of
    overcrowded households without adequate kitchen or plumbing
    grew by 20 percent, from 90,000 households to 110,000
    households. The number of families with severe housing costs
    grew by 55 percent, to 65,000 families. That is all in this
    century. That is just in these past 20 years that we are
    letting things get worse in our Tribal communities.
        But we can change that. This Congress can change that.
    Let's celebrate the 25th anniversary of NAHASDA this year by
    recommitting ourselves to fully supporting housing development
    in Indian country. NAIHC stands ready to work with any and
    every Member of Congress to address these housing issues.
        The current draft of the NAHASDA bill has a lot of great
    pieces. It contains some program improvements that Tribes have
    been asking for, for years. It includes proposals that will
    make housing development easier, including simplifying
    environmental reviews for housing, and relaxing flood insurance
    program requirements that would place Tribes on the same
    footing as States. It would make the HUD-VASH program for
    Tribal veterans permanent and open to all Tribal communities.
    Currently, the program only serves veterans in 27 of the 574
    Tribes. The bill would also create substantial set-asides for
    USDA programs that seem like a perfect fit for Tribal
    communities that have historically had little impact.
        One area where the current draft falls short is the
    authorization levels. While NAIHC supports reauthorization, the
    draft bill would cap authorizations for the next 5 years,
    starting at current funding levels. This would essentially mean
    that Tribes will always be capped at two-thirds of the
    purchasing power that they originally negotiated for through
    NAHASDA.
        NAIHC, as a Tribal membership organization, also believes
    that provisions like Section 604, that target individual
    Tribes, should be discouraged from a larger housing bill
    without that Tribe's support. For the particular issue of the
    hearing today, it is also considered a membership issue by
    NAIHC, and thus should be treated as such and not directed into
    a housing program reauthorization.
        Prior to NAHASDA, Tribes were piecing their housing
    programs together with various grants and funding sources.
    Despite the original promise of the consolidated block grant,
    25 years later Tribes are again piecing their housing programs
    together. While Tribes can and are leveraging resources from
    various Federal programs, it is not easy. Tribes are often
    confronted with a multitude of differing eligibility
    requirements, environmental views, and program rules.
        So what can we do, and what can Congress do? To end my
    comments, we can keep improving NAHASDA. We can reauthorize
    NAHASDA, and we can keep ensuring that national housing
    programs are also effective in Indian country. And we have to
    reverse the historic disinvestment and call on Congress,
    Federal agencies, Tribes, and the private sector to act. We
    must recognize that housing development in Tribal communities
    will rarely have the economies of scale that drive housing
    development in other areas, and we have to invest anyway,
    because it is needed in our Tribal communities and because it
    is a promise that the United States made to Tribal nations.
        With that, I will end my statement. NAIHC has submitted
    additional comments for the record. I look forward to answering
    any questions you may have. Thank you again for your support in
    improving housing opportunities for Tribal communities across
    the United States.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Walters can be found on page
    53 of the appendix.]
        Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Walters.
        Ms. Vann, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to give an
    oral presentation.

     STATEMENT OF MARILYN VANN, PRESIDENT, DESCENDANTS OF FREEDMEN
                OF THE FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES ASSOCIATION

        Ms. Vann. Greetings, Chairman Cleaver, Ranking Member Hill,
    and members of the House Financial Services Committee. I am
    Marilyn Vann, President of the Descendants of Freedmen of the
    Five Civilized Tribes Association. I am a member of the
    Cherokee Nation of Freedmen Descendants. The organization
    supports enforcement of 1866 treaty rights of descendants of
    Freedmen who face discrimination in Tribal registration, and
    accessing federally-funded services.
        I want to thank the subcommittee for holding this hearing,
    and I want to thank Chairwoman Waters and her staff for support
    of the Freedmen in NAHASDA. Today, I request that the members
    support Title VI, Section 604, the compliance section in the
    final NAHASDA bill that is adopted by Congress. If adopted as
    written, the Secretary of HUD would be authorized to reduce or
    withhold NAHASDA for one of more of the five Tribes if such
    Tribe is found to be in violation of its 1866 treaty
    obligations to Freedmen descendants who were registered on the
    Dawes Rolls. I point out that none of these received degrees of
    blood. The rolls were approved by Congress in 1907. Currently,
    only the Cherokee Nation works to fulfill its treaty
    obligations to Freedmen descendants.
        Almost all of the Freedmen were Black slaves of Tribal
    members. Prior to the Civil War, the Tribes allied with the
    confederate States to protect slavery, and at the end of the
    Civil War, signed new treaties with the United States. These
    treated granted the Cherokee and Seminole Freedmen and their
    descendants the right to Native Indian citizenship.
        Many of the descendants of Freedmen today are impoverished
    and in need of housing, through no fault of their own. This
    began during slavery, when there were Black codes, slave codes.
    Blacks were barred from education and acquiring assets, later
    suffering race massacres like in Tulsa, Jim Crow laws, and
    redlining from the U.S. Government.
        Starting in 1979, Tribal Nations passed laws to exclude
    Freedmen and/or treat Freedmen descendants as second-class
    citizens. Blacks in Oklahoma have lower homeownership rates and
    lower income than Native Americans, and both communities, less
    than Whites.
        As a result of past and current systemic racism,
    descendants of Freedmen have substantial housing needs. Some of
    those in need of assistance include such Creek Freedmen
    descendants as Mr. Lovett of Okmulgee, a senior citizen on
    disability who needs rental assistance. He has had a double
    lung transplant. And Mrs. Wilson of Okmulgee, a widowed senior
    citizen who desperately needs a roof. She has a tarp on her
    roof, but needs housing repairs. And Ms. Rice of Okmulgee, a
    single mom who works a part-time job and is a student, and
    needs rental assistance that she tried to get from the Creek
    Nation, but was turned away.
        Now, will the Tribes change without Federal intervention?
    History says no. Cherokee Nation only came into compliance
    after Federal court decisions in the Cherokee Nation v. Nash,
    and Vann v. Zinke cases, and passage of the Freedmen protective
    language in a 2008 NAHASDA Reauthorization Act, and at great
    personal cost to the Freedmen descendants and their allies.
    This nation spent millions to exclude Freedmen in the previous
    Administrations. Some councilpersons and candidates for office
    still oppose Freedmen citizenship. I appreciate former Chief
    Baker and Chief Hoskins for what they have done to honor the
    treaties.
        Moving on to the Seminole Nation, they excluded Freedmen
    descendants from receiving services even after they lost the
    Seminole Nation of Oklahoma v. Norton case in 2001. They re-
    categorized the Freedmen as citizens rather than members,
    reissuing the Freedmen Tribal membership cards to say zero,
    zero blood quantum and voting privileges only, and they tell
    other Tribes that Freedmen do not qualify for services, in
    spite of the DOI and HUD instructing the Tribe that Freedmen
    descendants do qualify for services.
        The Muscogee (Creek) Nation leadership stated that dialogue
    is needed about Freedmen but does nothing. The Tribe stresses
    validity of the 1866 treaty, Article 3, which confirms the
    Creek reservation [inaudible] Article 2 of the treaty, granting
    Freedmen the rights to share in national funds.
        In conclusion, the Tribal Governments receive money for
    housing programs, but the majority of Freedmen are excluded. I
    ask you to include the treaty obligation language in the final
    bill and support its passage in the full House. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Vann can be found on page 44
    of the appendix.]
        Chairman Cleaver. Thank you.
        Mr. Kolerok, you are now recognized for 5 minutes for your
    oral presentation.

       STATEMENT OF CHRIS KOLEROK, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC POLICY AND
            GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, COOK INLET HOUSING AUTHORITY

        Mr. Kolerok. Chairman Cleaver, Ranking Member Hill,
    Chairwoman Waters, and members of the subcommittee, thank you
    for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Chris
    Kolerok. I am Cup'ik Eskimo, a member of the Native Village of
    Mekoryuk, and I am the Director of Public Policy at Cook Inlet
    Housing Authority, the tribally-designated housing entity for
    the Cook Inlet region of Alaska. I was unanimously voted as the
    Legislative Committee Chair of the Association of Alaska
    Housing Authorities, and unanimously voted as Board Member for
    the national American Indian Housing Council. My comments today
    represent all of the 14 regional housing authorities that cover
    every geographic corner and Native population group in Alaska.
        I and my Alaskan colleagues thank Financial Services
    Committee Chairwoman Waters for her respect of Tribal self-
    determination and the goal of distributing funding without
    administrative burden or waste by allocating Indian housing
    funds through the NAHASDA formula in the Housing is
    Infrastructure Act of 2021.
        Why do we need investments in Indian housing and the
    NAHASDA reauthorized? We do not have enough homes, and the
    homes we do have are often decrepit. Nationally, we need 33,000
    new homes to alleviate overcrowding in Indian country today.
    The homes we do have are nearly 5 times as likely to have a
    physical deficiency as average, including lacking running
    water, or having electrical systems that are a fire hazard.
    Closer to home, in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region of Alaska, 40
    percent of homes are either overcrowded or severely
    overcrowded, and 35 percent lack complete plumbing.
        What does this look like, and what does this actually mean?
    I have seen, with my own eyes, in Brevig Mission, Alaska, an
    1,100-square-foot, 3-bedroom home, with 18 people living in it.
    With that many people, there are not enough bedrooms. There are
    not enough surfaces for everyone to sleep at the same time.
    Instead, they must sleep in shifts.
        In the hope that their children will grow up with a better
    life, some people sleep the day shift so that their children
    can sleep at night and attend school in the morning. Those
    people will never wake up in the morning for a job. Their
    children cannot learn at school if their home is too
    overcrowded to sleep or they carry the stress from that
    overcrowded home into school. Those children will face
    difficulty in getting a job forever if they cannot read, write,
    or do basic math. When 18 people share a home, and one person
    suffers from a substance abuse disorder, 17 other people also
    suffer from that affliction.
        There was at least one, and usually multiple homes like
    this in every village I served when I was the President of the
    Bering Straits Regional Housing Authority in northwest Alaska.
        How did we get here? It is an oversimplification, but true,
    that past Congresses and Presidents forgot about us. The Indian
    Housing Block Grant, 20 years ago, Fiscal Year 2001, was $640
    million. Last year, it was $647 million. HUD's budget 20 years
    ago was $28 billion, and last year, it was $60 billion. There
    is a long-running inequity in the distribution of new funding
    to HUD. Beginning to address this inequity is difficult, but I
    thank this subcommittee for doing this work.
        Second, there are no homeless people at 40 degrees below
    zero.
        So, what do we do going forward? I respectfully request the
    House and Senate to reauthorize NAHASDA. I also support the
    funding mechanism for Indian housing in the Housing is
    Infrastructure Act. I thank Chairwoman Waters again for her
    recognition and respect for self-determination in this Act.
        The NAHASDA formula works. It takes the many variables that
    quantify housing need and creates a single allocation that is
    noncompetitive and highly efficient to distribute. Self-
    determination is respected by the formula because it is a
    consensus model that was negotiated amongst all Tribes and HUD,
    representing the Federal Government.
        In the 25 years before NAHASDA, the Cook Inlet Housing
    Authority was able to construct 267 housing units, and in the
    25 years after, we have constructed over 1,500. Competitive
    programs that change from year to year, that Tribes cannot
    count on, may be effective at achieving certain short-term
    goals, but they do not, however, provide for long-term
    operation of affordable housing units, and they take us back to
    pre-NAHASDA days when we competed with each other and had
    Washington tell us what we needed.
        I thank the subcommittee again for the opportunity to speak
    with you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Kolerok can be found on page
    38 of the appendix.]
        Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Kolerok.
        Mr. Brossy, you are now recognized for 5 minutes for an
    oral presentation.

     STATEMENT OF JACKSON BROSSY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIVE CDFI
                             NETWORK (NCN)

        Mr. Brossy. Chairman Cleaver, Ranking Member Hill,
    Chairwoman Waters, and members of the subcommittee, my name is
    Jackson Brossy and I am the executive director for the Native
    CDFI Network (NCN). We are the only national member
    organization of community development financial institutions
    (CDFIs) that serves Native communities across the country. I am
    also a member of the Navajo Nation, and the subject of this
    hearing is near and dear to my heart, so thank you.
        At NCN, our member organization serves 27 different States.
    Our members provide access to capital for first-time
    homeowners, microentrepreneurs, consumers, and those who are
    often unable to get a conventional bank loan, and live in
    redlined areas across the country, and in Indian country,
    particularly.
        Yes, Indian country has been, historically, and currently
    is still being redlined when it comes to access to capital and
    housing finance. Redlining and underinvestment in programs like
    NAHASDA and the CDFI Fund, and the lack of access to capital
    contribute to the situation where Natives currently live in
    substandard housing, as this panel has wonderfully and
    explicitly described. It is a situation where no more than 30
    percent of members of the Navajo Nation have access to running
    water in their homes. It is a situation where there is severe
    overcrowding at a rate of 700 percent of what it is in the rest
    of the country. And this is unacceptable.
        There are also problems with financial literacy, access to
    credit, and the prices that indigenous people pay when they
    finally do get access to a loan. The Federal Reserve recently
    found that Native Americans living on reservations who want to
    buy homes are significantly more likely to have high-priced
    mortgages, and those mortgages often are up to 2 percentage
    points more than non-Native Americans get in the same house.
    This means that a Native American family purchasing a house for
    $140,000 on a reservation could pay up to $100,000 more over
    the lifetime of a 30-year loan.
        Problems of higher costs of homeownership and redlining in
    Indian country are unacceptable, and I am here to bring a
    solution to the table, and that solution is Native CDFIs.
    Native CDFIs across the country are doing our part to address
    the untenable situation, and we can use help and investment to
    make a greater impact on this problem. There are 69 Treasury-
    certified Native CDFIs across the country, and they provide
    access to capital to those who are unbanked and underbanked,
    with financial literacy and technical assistance. These Native
    CDFIs operate a wide spectrum of organizations and include
    tribally-sponsored CDFIs, like the Citizen Potawatomi Community
    Development Corporation of Oklahoma, and the majority of Native
    CDFIs, which are nonprofit loan funds, like the Native360 Loan
    Fund of Nebraska.
        Native CDFIs can offer homeownership loans, down payment
    assistance, and home buyer training so that new homeowners have
    the tools to keep their home and build a solid foundation for
    their family.
        Aligned with the spirit of NAHASDA, Native CDFIs are self-
    determination in action. They carry out the mission of NAHASDA
    and the CDFI Fund by increasing homeownership, and utilize both
    HUD opportunities such as the Section 184 Loan Guarantees, and
    HUD counseling, and other existing Federal programs such as the
    USDA Direct Loan Program, the Veterans Affairs Native American
    Direct Home Loan program, and the Federal Home Loan Bank
    System.
        However, these tools can be improved upon, and we make some
    detailed recommendations in our written comments. But one area
    I wanted to bring up was coordination between the Department of
    the Interior and HUD around the slow turnaround for Title
    Status Reports. We also wanted to highlight a great program at
    the USDA, called the USDA 502 Direct Program, that is really
    making a difference. In 2019, there were 6,194 direct loans
    made by this program. Of those 6,000 loans, only 2 of them were
    made on Tribal trust land. Thanks to a great pilot in South
    Dakota, Native CDFIs like the Four Bands community development
    are making a big difference, and we urge Congress to expand
    this pilot.
        And to wrap things up, the pandemic has pulled back the
    veil around the challenge of inadequate and poor housing in
    Native communities. I urge Congress and this committee to build
    upon the focus of this hearing and support the spirit of self-
    determination in NAHASDA. It is time to provide the resources
    to fund housing efforts and to eliminate barriers to utilizing
    other existing housing tools. Native CDFIs stand ready to work
    and help in this progress, and I know that we commit fully to
    working with Congress to help alleviate this problem and making
    sure that Native people have fair access to housing.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Brossy can be found on page
    28 of the appendix.]
        Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Brossy, for your
    testimony. And I thank all of you for your testimony.
        I now recognize myself for 5 minutes for questions.
        Mr. Hoskin, I would like for you, if you would, to describe
    any efforts that the Cherokee Nation has made to ensure that
    your members can access affordable prime mortgages, and what is
    the Nation going to do to help its membership overcome such
    barriers as limited credit histories, and how can NAHASDA
    reauthorization help address these barriers?
        Mr. Hoskin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In Cherokee Nation, we
    are focused on building paths to homeownership. One way in
    which we do that is a mortgage assistance program, and we use
    some resources to help people with down payments.
        But I think more important than that, we create an
    environment where they can get credit counseling, build their
    credit up as they need to, to access mortgages, including the
    HUD 184 program, which has been a successful program for
    Cherokee citizens. Those programs have proven successful so
    far, and as we go into our next fiscal year, we are determined
    to commit even more resources to those types of opportunities
    for homeownership.
        At Cherokee Nation, we believe that everyone needs to have
    their housing needs addressed. There are different levels. For
    those who are on their way to homeownership or could be
    counseled in a way that could get them worthy of credit, we
    want to help them get to a mortgage, and the mortgage
    assistance program that we offer has been very successful.
        Chairman Cleaver. I am talking about prime mortgage
    financing.
        Mr. Hoskin. Through our prime mortgage financing, we do
    work with a number of banks in our region. We do have good
    relationships with our banks. There are barriers, certainly,
    but the mortgage assistance program does pair them with
    mortgages through banks, but we provide some cash assistance to
    help them with things like down payments and things of that
    nature, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Cleaver. We had the credit rating agencies here
    last week, I think it was, or the week before, I'm not sure. Is
    that a problem as well, the credit histories of those seeking
    prime mortgages?
        Mr. Hoskin. Certainly, it is. Certainly, those are
    barriers, and that is where our staff that works with citizens
    on counseling and identifying what has hit their credit
    history, that is where we address that. But certainly, it is a
    barrier to homeownership.
        Chairman Cleaver. I had questions for everybody, but I got
    into this. The credit history issue, are there alternative ways
    in which we could develop Tribal credit history? I know the
    system of measurement.
        Mr. Hoskin. That is an interesting concept, Mr. Chairman,
    and I think that it would be something to explore. There are
    some loans that we offer that are not, in fact, reported to the
    credit agencies, which is a double-edged sword. On the one
    hand, we can help some of our people get access to credit--I am
    not talking mortgages but access to credit--when they are in
    need of a non-predatory lender. But it also takes them out of
    building a credit history. So, we are sort of beholden to the
    credit history reports and exploring a way to expand that in
    Indian country would be of interest.
        Chairman Cleaver. Thank you.
        Mr. Kolerok, are there some unique housing challenges that
    you face in Alaska that perhaps we would not normally even
    think about?
        Mr. Kolerok. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When I think about
    housing in rural Alaska, I like to think about a community
    called Savoonga, which is 150 miles into the Bering Sea. It is
    closer to Russia than it is to the coast of Alaska. There are
    no roads to this island. And in this community, the ice only
    allows ocean transport from July through September.
        So not just there, but if you think about, how do you build
    a home, and you think about the distance across Alaska,
    logistics is one of our biggest cost drivers, and logistics has
    risen in cost faster than the consumer price index. So as we
    talk about the difficulty of building homes now versus 20 years
    ago, we have to remember that the funding has stayed the same,
    but the cost of getting the material to an isolated, very small
    community, has gone up over 70 percent.
        Chairman Cleaver. Wow. My time is up. I now recognize the
    ranking member from Arkansas, Mr. Hill.
        Mr. Hill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I thank our
    panelists for a really good set of presentations.
        Mr. Brossy, when we look at some of the many families who
    are living on Tribal landsz, we too often, as I said in my
    opening statement, see the staggering and persistent poverty.
    And I mentioned in my opening statement this 2019 Brookings
    Institution report which found that child poverty rates for the
    Tribes have consistently exceeded 40 percent over the past 30
    years. That is a staggering number.
        NAHASDA exists to help attack part of that problem on the
    housing side. I am interested in better understanding what can
    be done to fight Tribal poverty, more broadly. So since you
    represent the CDFIs working on Tribal lands, can you talk a
    little bit about how Tribes are leveraging private capital for
    both jobs and other economic opportunity on Tribal lands?
        Mr. Brossy. Thank you for the question. I am going to take
    a step back and maybe address, how does the generational wealth
    transfer, and how do we set up our Native students and children
    for financial opportunity and growth moving forward? I think
    the Native CDFIs are helping with that. The Tribes obviously
    are doing a part of that, and that includes financial literacy,
    building up credit so that they are able to transfer wealth on
    to their next generation.
        And when it comes to accessing financial markets, Tribes
    are doing great things. They are doing great things with Title
    VI of NAHASDA, and I think that is an area that our members are
    going to look more closely at; I think it is something that is
    underutilized.
        But bringing it back to CDFIs, I do believe that the change
    that can happen in a generation from now is around financial
    literacy, credit building for young entrepreneurs and young
    consumers right now, that will impact generations and families
    moving forward.
        Mr. Hill. Thanks. And going back to the housing issue,
    looking at this Section 184 Loan Guarantee Program, it seems
    that those programs are chronically undersubscribed. HUD says
    that the Title VI program has only generated about 100 loans,
    worth $252 million, over the whole history of the Act. And the
    Section 184 program has generated 46,000 loans over its
    history.
        Can you talk to us about why these guarantee programs are
    not more active and what barriers currently exist to getting
    them used? You referenced Tribal lands and access to Tribal
    lands, so if you can mention in your answer if there are
    bureaucratic issues at the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) on
    clearing land title, and just what are some of those barriers?
        Mr. Brossy. There are significant delays in the Department
    of the Interior and BIA turning around things called Title
    Status Reports.
        Mr. Hill. What should be reasonable there?
        Mr. Brossy. They should be able to get something done in 30
    days.
        Mr. Hill. What is typical?
        Mr. Brossy. I don't know, but I have heard 6 months. Where
    deals fall apart, obviously the housing market is going up and
    valuations change.
        Mr. Hill. Right.
        Mr. Brossy. And there also is an issue with coordination
    between the Departments of the Interior and Housing and Urban
    Development, and within this past year there was a brief stall
    of taking on Section 184 loans, and we think that is
    unacceptable. Also, in our comments, we say that there is an
    opportunity for Native CDFIs to be the lender right now. Many
    in the private sector, the large banks have backed out of doing
    the Section 184 loans. Native CDFIs are ready to step in, but
    we need to make--
        Mr. Hill. And what is the key reason why the banks have
    stepped away from it?
        Mr. Brossy. I can't speak to that. You may need to bring
    somebody from the banks in. But I guess designing this type of
    program for the market segment is cumbersome to the larger
    banks, and they are not able to take advantage of economies of
    scale, whereas Native CDFIs would serve our community and we
    would be able to do it right away.
        Mr. Hill. You referenced the USDA 502 Direct Loan Program
    in your remarks, and you said that you were pleased with that
    pilot. Tell us more about that.
        Mr. Brossy. It is a great pilot in South Dakota. One of our
    members, the Four Bands Community Fund in Eagle Butte, South
    Dakota, has been able to create a pipeline of loans in rural
    development on Tribal trust land, which, going back to the
    issue of getting these Title Status Reports, has been really
    challenging and difficult. And like I said, the year before
    there were only 6 out of 6,000 of these direct loans that were
    made on Tribal trust land. Flipped on its head, in South
    Dakota, we want to see it expanded. There is a great bipartisan
    bill in the Senate. We would love your support and we would
    love the committee to move it forward.
        Mr. Hill. Thank you, Mr. Brossy. And thank you, Mr.
    Chairman. I yield back.
        Chairman Cleaver. The Chair now yields to the Chair of the
    full Financial Services Committee, Chairwoman Waters.
        Chairwoman Waters. Today, we are here to discuss the
    chronic housing and community development needs of Native
    American communities and the reauthorization of Native housing
    programs. However, we must ensure that Federal funds are not
    used to perpetuate anti-Blackness and racial injustice.
        Not many are familiar with the history of those who came to
    be known as the Freedmen. The Freedmen were Black individuals
    who were enslaved by five formerly slaveholding Tribal Nations.
    The Freedmen were forced to walk the Trial of Tears alongside
    their slave masters, and at the end of the Civil War were
    guaranteed full Tribal citizenship under treaty agreement
    between these formerly slaveholding Tribes and the United
    States Government in 1866. While Tribes like the Cherokee
    Nation have begun to make good on that promise, after decades
    of litigation, others have not. To this day, there are
    descendants of Native American Freedmen who are denied the full
    benefits of equal citizenship in certain Tribes based on their
    African ancestry.
        First of all, I want to say thank you to Chuck Hoskin, Jr.,
    Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Chief Hoskin, I want to
    thank you for your wonderful presentation here today and the
    way that you described what is right and what is fair.
        And I would hope that the other Tribes would follow suit,
    but my understanding is that they have no intentions of doing
    that. And once somebody said, ``We will let this issue be
    settled in the court.'' Well, there are some that have even
    started to talk about going to the courts. They just don't do
    it, and they just don't want to do it.
        And Ms. Vann, I would like to say thank you for never
    wavering on your fight for human dignity and equal recognition
    as a descendent of Freedmen, despite the complex layers of what
    it means to be both Black and Indigenous. I know that has not
    been easy. Your tireless efforts paid off when the Cherokee
    Nation finally began to recognize you and your fellow
    descendants of Freedmen as equal citizens of the Cherokee
    Nation.
        However, the fight continues for many other Freedmen
    descendants of other Tribal Nations that continue to
    disenfranchise and marginalize them. Your organization
    represents descendants of Freedmen from all of these Tribes.
    Can you tell us about the ongoing struggle for those
    descendants of Freedmen who continue to be discriminated
    against despite treaty obligations that should protect them?
    Are they in need of housing? Are they in need of health care?
        Or just as we are talking about reauthorization, and we are
    talking about how desperate it is for everybody, are the
    descendants desperate also? Do they need to share in these
    appropriations that they get from the Federal Government, with
    CDFI? Of course, we are responsible for CDFI funding right here
    in this committee, and we did a great job in giving COVID money
    to all of the Tribes. I will not go through the numbers.
        Ms. Vann?
        Ms. Vann. Greetings, Chairwoman Waters. Thank you, again.
    Yes, ma'am, the descendants of Freedmen people are in desperate
    need of housing as well as other programs. I really did not
    have time to get into the Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen, but
    yes ma'am, they also have great needs too. We have here two
    representatives of the Seminole Nation, the Freedmen bands. In
    the Seminole Nation, for instance, there are persons who have
    homes they can no longer afford to live in due to desperate
    poverty. Among the Freedmen people, you are talking about other
    services, medical services, within the pandemic, Freedmen not
    being able to get shots, and the Seminole Nation telling the
    Indian Health Service (IHS)--
        Chairwoman Waters. As I understand it--interrupting you
    just for a minute--the Seminole denied vaccination for COVID-
    19, despite the fact that we had given the money to all of the
    Tribes. Is that correct?
        Ms. Vann. Yes, ma'am. They had told IHS, and gave them a
    list of people to not serve with vaccinations. And people died,
    including leaders of the Freedmen people. That is correct.
        Chairwoman Waters. I don't know what else to say.
        Ms. Vann. Yes, ma'am.
        Chairwoman Waters. The case is very clear. I thank you, Mr.
    Chairman, for holding this hearing. It is so very important.
    But I want to tell you, this issue is not going to go away. I
    am going to work on this issue until we get the right thing
    done.
        I yield back the balance of my time.
        Chairman Cleaver. I thank the gentlewoman from California
    for her prophetic comments.
        The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr.
    Rose.
        Mr. Rose. Thank you, Chairman Cleaver and Ranking Member
    Hill, for organizing this hearing, and thanks to our witnesses
    for your time here today.
        As Congress considers reauthorizing NAHASDA, it is
    important to acknowledge which parts of the program have worked
    well. One of the core tenets of NAHASDA is the flexible nature
    of the block grant, which allows for self-determination by
    Tribes.
        Could each of you on the panel discuss how the
    flexibilities included in this program have allowed Native
    communities to develop units, compared to the number developed
    when they received multiple single-use streams of funding from
    HUD?
        Mr. Brossy, if you would start?
        Mr. Brossy. Taking a step back, the majority members of our
    organization are not tribally-designated housing entities, so
    most of ours do not directly receive the block grant. However,
    there are a few native CDFIs that are subsidiaries of a Tribal
    Designated Housing Entity (TDHE), and there is a great example
    in Alaska, the Tlingit and Haida. And they are able to work
    with the Treasury to create a program where they are able to
    provide financing for working-class members who might otherwise
    make too much money to participate in a lot of HUD programs,
    but still do not have the credit history to get a conventional
    loan. And so, they are able to find and finance that gap there.
    And I think that is also an area that a lot of folks on the
    panel might have some thoughts about.
        Mr. Rose. Sure. I will start with Mr. Walters, and work my
    way across the panel.
        Mr. Walters. Sure. Thank you. You are right when you talk
    about the flexibilities provided under NAHASDA. Each Tribe is
    submitting their own Indian Housing Plan each year that
    addresses their unique community needs. Tribes are different,
    based on their geography, where they are across the country,
    how urban they are, how rural they are. So, giving the funds
    directly to Tribes through a consolidated block grant has
    worked wonders over the last 20 years.
        In the beginning years of NAHASDA, they were outproducing
    the prior years under HUD funding and under HUD control of the
    housing programs. They were building more new homes under
    NAHASDA than before NAHASDA was enacted. That has gone down,
    due to the stagnant levels of NAHASDA funding. The Tribes have,
    overall, been very successful with NAHASDA, so they very much
    support the program and wish it to continue.
        Mr. Rose. And Chief Hoskin, would you like to address that?
        Mr. Hoskin. Certainly, briefly. The direct funding of
    NAHASDA and the ability to craft Indian Housing Plans has been
    indispensable for the Cherokee Nation. Indian country is not a
    monolith. You will find different needs on the Cherokee Nation
    than you will elsewhere, and our ability to craft those
    programs is important. So, we certainly support reauthorization
    and the flexibility that comes with it.
        Mr. Rose. Would any of the rest of you like to add anything
    there?
        Ms. Vann. I will go ahead and add something here. I
    certainly believe that NAHASDA should be flexible. I believe in
    Tribal sovereignty, only that Tribes need to follow the law.
    But each Tribe, for instance, as earlier said--geography, the
    needs of the Tribes--in some places, there may be more rental
    assistance needed or such. And I agree with that flexibility,
    but not in issues, for instance, say it is blood quantum or
    those kinds of things that are used to determine the services
    for the members of the Tribe.
        Mr. Rose. Mr. Kolerok?
        Mr. Kolerok. The Cook Inlet Housing Authority, in the 25
    years before NAHASDA, built 267 housing units, and in the 25
    years after NAHASDA, has built over 1,500. NAHASDA put control
    of housing where it should be, which is in the hands of the
    Tribes. Prior to that, there were strict limits on housing
    costs, there were design standards, and that legacy is still
    visible today. Homes designed in California and shipped up
    whole are sitting, decaying and decrepit, in our Alaskan
    villages right now.
        Unshackling us from HUD's mandates allowed us to get
    creative. The Cook Inlet Housing Authority was the first entity
    to mix NAHASDA funding with low-income housing tax credits.
    Getting away from the competitive nature of HUD's prior funding
    into the formula fund freed us from annual competition, and it
    allowed us to partner with our sister organizations in Alaska.
    For example, the AVCP Regional Housing Authority in southwest
    asked us to help them with their tax credits indication and
    modeling. We actually helped another organization develop tax
    credit property off the road system that would not have been
    possible when we were competing for every single dollar, in
    eight separate programs every year.
        Mr. Rose. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        Chairman Cleaver. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now
    recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Vargas, for 5
    minutes.
        Mr. Vargas. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for allowing
    me to speak, and I appreciate all of the witnesses being here
    today. I do apologize that I missed a little bit of the
    testimony at the beginning, so some of my questions may be
    repetitive, and I apologize for that at the outset.
        I do want to say that I am very thankful about the
    conversation that has been going with respect to how successful
    NAHASDA has been, the flexibility that it has provided for
    Indian Tribes. In fact, as was just stated by Mr. Kolerok, I
    think you said that it placed the--I don't want to put words in
    your mouth--I think you said it put the control of the housing
    where it should be, with the Indian Tribes, although you did
    mention California homes rotting in Alaska. I am not sure about
    that. I may question that, since I am from California.
        But I did want to ask, Mr. Hoskin, you are the Principal
    Chief of the Cherokee Nation. I apologize that I missed your
    testimony. I was really anxious to hear your testimony about
    the Freedmen. I don't know if you spoke more extemporaneously
    other than your comments that you had here, but I would like to
    hear your view--you were praised by the Chair of the Full
    Committee--I would like to hear more of your testimony, and I
    apologize again that I was not here. I will let you add to what
    you said earlier.
        Mr. Hoskin. Thank you, Congressman, and I appreciate the
    kind words from Chairwoman Waters. Quite simply, this is the
    law of the land in the Cherokee Nation: equality. Equality not
    stemming necessarily from recent actions, but equality
    recognizing that we made a sacred promise 155 years ago. If we
    believe that treaties are the law of the land, and the United
    States should live up to their end of treaties, then we have to
    do the same. And if we look back to what our ancestors did,
    they agreed to equality. In the Treaty of 1866, they resolved
    that issue. But 155 years have passed, and it was not resolved.
    So, we are undertaking efforts for reconciliation today, not
    only legal equality on paper, but equality in action, making
    sure that every person who comes into a Tribal office building,
    or a program or service, is treated equally based on the fact
    that they are a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
        And I would note, Congressman, that if you are a citizen of
    the Cherokee Nation, what signifies that is a card with your
    name on it, your birthdate, and your citizenship number. And it
    doesn't have anything to do with your descendancy. It is
    whether you are a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and you are
    treated equal on that basis. We have to make sure that we
    practice that every day, so we have to make sure that any
    barriers that might have existed, historically, to access are
    knocked down.
        For example, my good friend, Marilyn Vann, has mentioned
    Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) cards, degrees of
    Indian blood. That idea is not relevant to a Cherokee Nation
    program or service because that is contrary to principles of
    equality in the Cherokee Nation.
        So, those are just a few of the ways in which we are making
    sure we embrace the spirit of equality, and we are also
    undertaking efforts to look back at history and culture,
    artistic expressions of Freedmen descendants that for too long
    have not been part of the Cherokee story. They are going to be
    part of the Cherokee story today.
        So I could speak a great deal on the subject. It is
    something that I think has made the Cherokee Nation a better
    nation, a stronger nation. I can only speak to how the Cherokee
    experience has gone, and I think other Tribes may look at our
    experience, may look at our legal history, and they may find
    instruction based on what we have done and our experience.
        Mr. Vargas. Thank you very much for those comments. I do
    want to probe a little further if I could with you. You said,
    sir, that it has been difficult to resolve over time, and that
    although it has been difficult, obviously you have a better
    nation, a stronger nation. Well, what made it difficult? Why
    was it difficult, and why is it difficult for other Tribes?
        Mr. Hoskin. I can't speak for other Tribes, but I can, for
    the Cherokee Nation--let's look at the Treaty of 1866.
    Following that period of time, there was still a period of
    great change and tumult in Indian country. And then, you find
    the imposition of the State of Oklahoma. So for most of the
    20th Century, you find Indian nations--and I will speak really
    only to the Cherokee Nation, a nation not allowed by the
    Government of the United States to exercise its rights of self-
    government. And it is only when we get to the 1970s, that we
    begin to pick ourselves back up.
        I think that interruption of many, many decades really
    arrested the development of the Cherokee Nation in terms of our
    civil society. And I think as we have regained our footing, and
    we had a century of, frankly, suppressing and denying the
    history of the Freedmen, that it took some time for the body
    politic to sort of understand that history. That history simply
    wasn't taught a great deal, Freedmen history, and I think as
    Freedmen activists and advocates have raised that issue in the
    1980s and the 1990s, and into the 2000s, I think it came to
    penetrate the consciousness of Cherokee leaders, not only me,
    but certainly including me.
        That process takes time, and I think it is just the unique
    history of Tribes, particularly within the State of Oklahoma,
    that caused some delay and difficulty in achieving that.
        There is something about a history that involves enslaving
    other people. I think the United States could relate to this.
    It just doesn't feel very good, and it's something that perhaps
    for generations, people don't talk about. But we are talking
    about it today at the Cherokee Nation. I think we are a better
    nation for having done it. But when you don't talk about it,
    Congressman, you don't take action to correct it.
        Mr. Vargas. Thank you very much. My time has expired. I
    appreciate the extra time. Thank you, Chief Hoskin. And thank
    you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
        Chairman Cleaver. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman
    from Wisconsin, Mr. Steil, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Steil. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Walters,
    I think you would agree that many Tribes still face pretty
    significant housing challenges. It was noted that one of the
    last committee hearings on this topic was a remote hearing in
    the State of Wisconsin, hosted by our former colleague, Sean
    Duffy. And I have spent time at some of the reservations in
    Wisconsin and I have seen this firsthand, that Native
    Americans, in many ways, are more likely to experience poor
    housing conditions and overcrowding than some other
    communities.
        And as we consider the NAHASDA reauthorization, I think it
    is important that we also discuss the regulatory and procedural
    issues in addition to the overall funding levels, that we are
    looking at process, not just dollars. And so, the question I
    would like you to expound on, if you would, is ways that we can
    streamline the construction process for NAHASDA housing so that
    each dollar can go further. And should Congress consider any
    national environmental policy act or other permitting reforms
    that would allow us to be more efficient with our spending?
        Mr. Walters. Thank you for the question. I think that is a
    very good place to start. I think the current NAHASDA draft
    bill includes provisions regarding the Environmental Protection
    Act. I think when Tribes are developing housing, they are now
    using multiple sources of funding, from different Federal
    agencies--Treasury, DOI, HUD, USDA. So, all of those agencies
    have their own rules and regulations, whether it is
    environmental or otherwise.
        Whereas the current draft bill, and to the extent now
    Tribes are undertaking housing projects with just HUD funding,
    they can control that environmental review process and all the
    other kind of administrative logistics work on their own. But
    when you start blending these other streams of funding in, you
    start running into that issue. Currently, the bill would allow
    the Tribe to keep control of an environmental review process if
    the NAHASDA dollars were the primary source of funding. That is
    not necessarily realistic for a lot of these housing
    developments. These housing developments are usually million-
    dollar projects, and they don't always have the most HUD
    funding as part of that. They are going to blend a lot of other
    funding sources. So certainly, easing administrative burden
    will help a lot of Tribes build more home faster.
        Mr. Steil. I think you bring up a really good point that
    there are multiple streams of funding that are going into many
    of these projects. Each stream of funding is going to have its
    own rules and regulations. Is there an approach that you think
    would be successful in streamlining this, to create more
    efficiency, or as we look to kind of trying to streamline this,
    make this more efficient, and remove some of the regulatory red
    tape that you are facing?
        Mr. Walters. I think it is a recognition that Tribes are
    able to do this on their own. They are doing it now under HUD,
    under Indian Housing Block Grant dollars. So, where they have
    shown the ability to do that and carry out those processes,
    there is no reason to make Tribal housing programs jump through
    the hoops of other agencies just because the funding stream may
    have come from there. So to the extent possible, I would
    encourage where a Tribe is building housing and they have that
    expertise built up over 25 years, let them control the
    administrative processes under one process overall.
        Mr. Steil. I appreciate your insight on that, and I think
    there is a lot to be learned from your testimony there on the
    importance of local control, removing some of that regulatory
    red tape. We see this time and again here in Washington.
        Let me shift gears with my remaining time, if I can, to
    you, Mr. Brossy. I want to step outside the housing discussion
    just for a moment and look at some of the broader financial
    challenges that many Tribes are facing. We have heard from some
    of the witnesses here today about difficult circumstances in
    many Tribal areas. I think improving access to financial
    services can be a really important component of our overall
    strategy to create more economic opportunity for Tribal
    members. You noted some of this in your written testimony.
        Can you just comment on what you think are some of the
    clear impediments for financial inclusion that Congress should
    be looking to address?
        Mr. Brossy. Thank you for the question, Mr. Steil. Again,
    taking it back to financial literacy, financial training, these
    are things that are often not taught in schools. They are
    taught in homes, and when we are dealing with Native
    communities, we are talking about being in a cash economy for
    only a couple of generations. So, what Native CDFIs can do
    around financial literacy, financial education, and credit
    building is very important, and we want Congress to support it
    100 percent.
        One thought I had on the earlier question about
    streamlining dollars for construction and making sure that they
    go the furthest, there is a movement toward eliminating what we
    call dual or even triple taxation on development on Indian
    lands. And that deals directly with the States. I am getting
    outside of what the Native CDFIs do, but I do think that if we
    really want to make sure that there is an incentive and not a
    disincentive for doing projects on Tribal lands, States
    shouldn't be able to tax those operations at the same level and
    then not provide services there. There should be some sort of
    waiver. Some States are looking at this individually, but it
    also could be at a Federal level.
        Mr. Steil. Thank you very much. And thank you all for your
    testimony. I yield back.
        Chairman Cleaver. Thank you. The Chair now recognizes the
    gentleman from Texas, Mr. Taylor, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate this
    hearing. And I will make a broad comment that the discussion we
    are having about whether or not to reauthorize a program that
    continues to be appropriated for really underscores the
    brokenness of the Federal budgeting process. And just something
    I have noticed since I have been here--this is only my second
    term in Congress--is that whereas virtually every government
    that I have ever seen has a single-bill budget, the Federal
    Government has an authorization process, technically a
    budgeting, and then a 12-bill appropriations process. That is a
    very unique budgeting process. It is the only place on Earth
    that this process is attempted to be tried. In 45 years of
    trying it, we have actually only gotten 4 budgets on time with
    this particular process.
        And, unfortunately, you are the victims, right? You are
    trying to come and authorize a program that keeps getting
    appropriated for, but the authorizations are kind of an
    extraneous political exercise rather than actually having a
    real, substantive policy thing.
        Anyway, that is a process comment. But you are here, and
    obviously, this is an important program for your communities.
        We have heard a lot of advocacy from the witnesses about
    the importance of flexibility, the ability to use this program
    as you see fit. And I was just going to throw it out--are there
    any other additional flexibilities specifically that you would
    like to see? If you want to raise your hand, I will call on
    you. But you all have already said it. It is in your written
    testimony. Yes?
        Mr. Walters. I think this goes to some of the other
    questions we have heard from other members, is the flexibility
    regarding getting private capital and investment into Indian
    country, a lot of the questions have kind of been geared
    towards, where can Tribal communities receive or reach out to
    private investment? But it is making private investment also
    work in Tribal communities. There are a lot of tax credit
    programs that encourage banks and other lenders to participate
    in development across the country, and there are a lot of
    programs that emphasize underserved communities. But Tribal
    communities are always the last group out of the underserved
    communities in this country--based on their geography, based on
    their land tenure, based on legal aspects.
        So, adding flexibilities there and encouraging that
    partnership between Tribes and capital and private markets will
    help overall development in Indian country.
        Mr. Taylor. Just to that end, as someone who was in the
    banking industry for a while--and I was reading a 2017 HUD
    report, and I will just read what it says: ``Mortgage lending
    in Indian country is made difficult by factors common to
    underserved markets and rural areas,'' pointing out that
    lending in Indian country is even more difficult because Tribal
    land trusts cannot be alienated or encumbered. In other words,
    if I put a lien on a property, the judicial process may not be
    clear, whereas in Texas, where I am from, you can foreclose and
    the bank can take the property if they are not paying their
    money.
        And so, that special legal structure, I think goes to the
    redlining that you referred to earlier, which is illegal. Under
    Federal banking law, we don't allow banks to redline, but if
    you create this special legal structure--and that is a choice
    that you are making; maybe I am incorrect on that and Congress
    needs to fix that for you--but the legal structure you have
    created then, in turn, made it difficult for banks to come in
    and encumber land. And that may be different by Tribe.
        I just threw out a ton of stuff. Yes, Mr. Brossy?
        Mr. Brossy. I have one more thing to add, and that is when
    we talk about bringing in outside investment and kind of
    thinking outside the box, one area that we wanted to touch on
    was bringing folks to the table with new market tax credits.
    This is something that is not new to the Financial Services
    Committee. Last year, the Committee on Ways and Means held a
    hearing, and they sent a letter to the Treasury asking them why
    there has been almost zero dollars invested, less than 1
    percent of allocations for new market tax credits going to
    Native-led operations, including Native CDFIs and CDEs. And
    there hasn't been anyone in any Native-led organizations in the
    past 4 years who has received allocations, despite need and
    capacity. And that is something that Congress has looked at,
    and I think it deserves additional scrutiny.
        Mr. Taylor. Going back to the question of encumbrances and
    foreclosures, the way property is structured in 50 States, but
    sometimes not necessary--do you want to speak to that, why you
    are structured that way, or should you change? Do we need to
    help you change that? Can you change that? Do you want to
    change that?
        Mr. Brossy. Yes, that is going to take us about an hour.
    Land title in Indian country, there are, I think, about 10
    different layers. Oklahoma is different than the Navajo Nation,
    where I am from. But the area that we focus most on, or that we
    think has been the most difficult to develop, is Tribal trust
    land. And we need to get folks from the Department of the
    Interior and HUD together on the same page, working with us.
        Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see my time has
    expired. I yield back the balance of my time.
        Chairman Cleaver. Thank you. Let me thank the witnesses for
    being here and I apologize--this joint where we work sometimes
    creates conflicts, and so we had five votes, and you were
    sitting here waiting patiently for us. So, we apologize for
    that. It happens all too frequently. Thank you very much.
        Under normal circumstances, we probably would have had
    another round of questions. We won't today, but I would have
    asked a question about whether or not it is true that some of
    the five Tribes actually inflate their numbers in order to get
    a higher allocation of dollars. I am not going to ask the
    question now or even bring it up, but I thought that it might
    have been a good question, if we had a little more time.
        The Chair notes that some Members may have additional
    questions for these witnesses, which they may wish to submit in
    writing. Without objection, the hearing record will remain open
    for 5 legislative days for Members to submit written questions
    to these witnesses and to place their responses in the record.
    Also, without objection, Members will have 5 legislative days
    to submit extraneous materials to the Chair for inclusion in
    the record.
        The hearing is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 4:35 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

                                A P P E N D I X

                                 July 27, 2021

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