HUD, SWONAP OFFICIALS MEET WITH NHA, NAVAJO NATION TO INVIGORATE HOUSING EFFORTS - 10-23-24
FT. DEFIANCE, Ariz.—Federal officials from Washington, D.C. met with Navajo Housing Authority, Office of the President and Vice President, and Division of Community Development to discuss how the department could help the Navajo Nation with providing safe and sanitary housing to families.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Southwest Office of Native American Programs visited the Navajo Nation Oct. 23 during a three-day field visit with four tribal housing authorities in the region. The group also visited with housing providers at Acoma Pueblo, White Mountain Apache, and Zuni Pueblo.
NHA officials at the meeting included Board of Commissioners Vice President David Sloan, CEO Heather L. Duncan-Etsitty, Chief Administrative Officer Terrilynn Cook, Chief Operations Officer Ernest Franklin, Chief Financial Officer Raymond Nopah, Grants Manager Nellie Gilmore, and Development and Construction Services Division Director Wesley Begay Jr.
Visiting officials
The HUD Office of the Chief Financial Officer representatives included Chief of Staff September “Tembi” Secrist, Office of Budget Resource Planning and Reporting Division Director LaTonya Malone, Office of Systems Security Administrator Jacqueline Rooths, Office of Budget Senior Analyst James Bertotti, Strategic Planning and Performance Division Management and Program Analyst Adam Goldstein, and Director of the CFO’s Accounting Operations Center, Mary Lou Dominguez.
SWONAP officials included Administrator Dr. Corinna Stiles, Deputy Administrator Floyd Tortalita, Director of Grants Management Shane Begay, and Grants Management Specialist Lisa Smith.
For the Office of the President and Vice President, representatives included Chief of Staff Patrick Sandoval, Deputy
Attorney General Heather Clah, Executive Assistant to the Chief of Staff Holly James, Senior Programs and Projects Specialist Sharilene Jeff, Staff Writers Kianna Joe, and Alastair Bitsoi.
CEO report
Duncan-Etsitty provided an overview of NHA’s activities, including the recent memorandum of agreement with Navajo Engineering and Construction Authority to provide horizontal construction of infrastructure, streamlining internal processes to meet the housing need on Navajo, the four pillars guiding NHA’s direction, housing occupancy and vacancy rates, and fostering relationships with tribal and federal leadership during the past year.
“We need to make houses better and faster, so we can get people into a home, because that’s what our job is,” she said.
Meeting the Undesignated Fund Factor was another area that Duncan-Etsitty highlighted, noting that NHA exceeded the UDFF by $4.2 million. She said, going into the new program year, NHA has spent close to $8 million in the past four weeks.
“The NECA memorandum of agreement is significant because of the challenges we have getting contractors on the Navajo Nation,” she said, adding that NHA has not had an MOA for almost 15 years.
“What we’re really looking at doing is collaborating with NTUA or other enterprises, to look at our long-term plans and gauge our Indian Housing Plan around what they are doing so there is no duplication of work,” she said. “I’ve been working on this enterprise meeting since my arrival (to NHA) and so far, we’ve met with NECA and Indian Health Services.”
She said master planning for housing with 10 chapters is also underway. A request for proposals has been completed and 10 chapters have been selected for the project.
“Chapters don’t have money to do master planning, so we’ll be assisting them with it,” she said.
Cook spoke next and said NHA has spent the last year assessing the organization and engaging employees for goals and objectives at the management level.
Employee engagement survey
Initiatives like the employee engagement survey led to the creation of the four strategic pillars: meeting IHP planned expenditures, optimizing internal functions, maintaining HUD compliance, and strengthening partnerships.
“Establishing stability for NHA is the number one thing that we’re trying to do,” she said. “Since 2017, we’ve been changing (CEOs) every year.”
Establishing a knowledge base through leveraging resources, training, development of technical expertise with the Native American Housing and Self Determination Act of 1996, and cross-training are all integral components of creating a robust training program for 2025, Cook said.
“We’re going from fear of making decisions to embracing policies and taking our blinders off,” she said. “We need to find our ‘chi’ (circulating life force).”
As part of the NHA reorganization of the past year, policies and procedures were prioritized; some were rescinded, and others were consolidated. Setting procurement expenditure goals was another area for improvement - NHA spent $68 million in the past year but has spent as much as $154 million annually in the past.
“We’ve created a comprehensive dashboard between division chiefs to align the process and our IT division director is addressing automation, processing day-to-day operations, refreshing the IT plan, and developing a scope of work for an enterprise plan that will provide real-time data dashboards,” she said.
Omni channel efforts
Omni channel access for internal and external data solutions is another area of focus, she said, noting that all procurement must also align with the Buy American, Build American guidelines provided by HUD.
“We’re communicating with our contractors, and we are planning to go live December 1,” she said.
Nopah said NHA is creating a baseline and getting back to basics to gauge performance and measure progress. He said meeting the UDFF in Sept. was part of building capacity to address the backlog of proposals.
The HUD field monitoring report has three outstanding issues related to program income and non-program income, he said, adding that those issues have been addressed and that the last step left is to issue a letter to HUD detailing the resolution.
“We had 33 audit findings, and we have brought that down to 14. The only (audit findings) remaining are from 2021 to 2023, and a lot of those are duplicates,” he said. “By March 2025, we should have those down to five audit findings.”
Nopah commended Gilmore for creating a process for efficient grants management that led to submission of the IHP before the HUD deadline. NHA management worked with field offices to determine capacity to complete projects and addressed dormant projects for completion or reprogramming of funding to other projects.
“We continue to create coordination and build capacity for performance indicators at HUD because we know Congress wants to know where everything is. Any guidance, references, and resources are appreciated,” he said.
Enterprise architecture
Franklin led a PowerPoint presentation on the NHA enterprise architecture that provides a framework for how the 15 housing management offices communicate and interact with one another. This includes the NHA Board of Commissioners, executive branch, financial services branch, administrative branch, and operations branch.
Modernization activities for public rental units and homeownership development, model activities, new construction, infrastructure development, and environmental reporting are just a few areas that are being tracked through the system.
“We want to get into a rhythm with policies and procedures so we can get other funding sources,” he said.
Franklin said a housing study was conducted that identified the need for 30,000 homes that needed to be built on the Navajo Nation, noting that infrastructure was not included.
“We’re doing a utility capacity analysis for our 10-year plan, and this will include the capacity needed for future housing, using current demographics,” he said. “This is why we’re establishing partnerships.”
1,000 home initiative
Sandoval spoke next and began with a rhetorical question: who qualifies for a home from NHA? Answer: low-income families.
“The Navajo Nation would like to sit down with HUD to over these qualification guidelines because salaries disqualify people from applying for housing,” he said. “President Nygren’s thousand home initiative is about clearing the red tape and bureaucracy for housing.”
Sandoval said the Navajo Nation has $9 billion in the bank right now, including American Rescue Plan Act funds that should be utilized to address housing and the bonding capacity on the reservation.
“We need multi-use, low income, mixed density housing,” he said. “How many homes are unoccupied by NHA right now?”
Vacant units
Duncan-Etsitty responded that there are 468 vacant units due to a variety of reasons, ranging from changes in the board composition and vision, change in direction and leadership at NHA, vandalism, and needed renovations including major repairs due to meth and fentanyl exposure in the housing units.
“Coming on (to work at NHA), I said our focus really needs to be on basic public rental units, so we hired 58 temporary maintenance staff to help us repair these 468 units,” she said.
Some homes, she said, are boarded up but ready for occupancy. They’re boarded up because of vandalism, she explained, noting that the boards prevent windows from being broken.
“We have 636 people on our wait list for housing right now and we had about 1,400 on the wait list when I started,” she said. “Our families shouldn’t be chasing us for occupancy, we’re a service to the people.”
Duncan-Etsitty said there are 185 units that are ready for occupancy.
HUD officials suggested essential housing program opportunities, conveying homeownership units, federal tax credits, and partnerships with healthcare facilities to provide housing to Navajo families as workable solutions.
Franklin said tenants do not want to move out of the public rental units because they have adapted their lives to low rent housing.
Tolerance for chaos
“I’ve been here long enough to know that if we don’t have stability up front, it ain’t going to go nowhere,” he said. “We’ve been through 10 CEOs in the past five years; the stability is not there and that’s what scares me about Heather leaving.”
The revolving door of leadership always results in strategic realignment, moving staff around, changes to the IHP, and different goals and objectives.
“People come in with different ambitions. The reason why things are working now is because Heather was from NHA already and she didn’t realign the IHP,” Franklin said. “We had one CEO come in and change everything (on the IHP) to tax credit, and that complicated everything.”
Stiles responded that SWONAP will continue to aid NHA, but that problems such as playing musical chairs with CEOs only create disorder and addressed her comments to the only NHA board member in attendance at the meeting.
“Mr. Sloan: HUD’s tolerance for chaos is narrowing and the flexibility we were willing to provide is quickly narrowing,” she said.
“What’s HUD’s opinion of the current leadership, progress, and movement at NHA? Do you have any indicator?” asked Sandoval.
“Last week, we had our first quarterly meeting with the Navajo Nation and NHA about the successes of FY 2024,” Stiles said. “What we presented at the meeting was full of accomplishments and successes and we presented that information to President Nygren’s staff in Washington, D.C.”
“Ms. Duncan, one of the things I’d like to do is get you before the president immediately,” said Sandoval. “We need to talk about the stability because one of the worst things right now is instability.”
Tortalita spoke next and prefaced his comments by saying he worked for Indian housing for more than 25 years, 16 of which were as executive director of the Acoma Housing Authority.
He witnessed the growth of NHA, especially from his time as a board member with the Native American Indian Housing Council, during the time NHA leadership faced scrutiny for unexpended funding.
NHA Board of Commissioners composition
“This is the first time I’ve really seen on Navajo that this is how they’re going to spend and how they’re going to expend over the years,” he said. “It is a lot of progression that has been happening.
“As someone who came from that side of the fence before coming here (to HUD), it’s a lot,” Tortalita added.
Sandoval questioned the composition of the NHA Board of Commissioners and asked when the terms of service would expire for commissioners.
“That is one board that we really have not paid attention to: but we are going to get some folks on it. There is some good-looking progress here and we obviously want to stay on that track,” Sandoval said. “We will probably need a meeting with the board as well.”
Duncan-Etsitty received an email Oct. 18, that included a letter from her supervisor, Tammy Yazzie, NHA Board of Commissioners Chairwoman, stating that her contract would not be renewed.
The meeting concluded and officials from HUD and SWONAP joined NHA for site visits to the Capital Vue Apartment Complex project in Window Rock, Ariz. and new housing stock constructed in Rock Springs, N.M.
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