Governor William R. Rhodes
Within his two consecutive administrations and with the assistance of his Executive Team, Governor Rhodes has been able to facilitate the construction of 568 homes within the Community. This doesn’t include 139 homes that are scheduled to go up this year.
The Governor has also effectively appropriated the usage of federal dollars, through the Native American Housing Assistance and Self Determination Act (NAHASDA), for home construction. Rhodes said, “We’re pushing everything to NAHASDA funding. We have to. It’s federal funding that we have to use and it’s available. If we’re not going to use it then the federal government will take it away from us.”
In utilizing NAHASDA funds, the Governor has three planned communities that will provide for 85 homes each.
“I’ve announced that there will be three planned communities. One on the east end, one in D5 and the other on the west end,” he said.
The Governor has also taken landmark steps in demolishing old, condemned houses to make way for larger, energy efficient replacements. On Wed, Jul 7, Rhodes signed a contract to demolish 13 homes in D3, which is the first time rental homes will be demolished in the Community to make way for new homes (see related story on page 8).
“Those homes have seen their life and they’re no good,” he said. “We’re not going to put people into something like that. Anything that gets to the state of being boarded up should be demolished and replaced. We’re going to do that to more and more old homes.”
Still the rumbles of discontent have echoed throughout the districts as Community members have come forth with issues they have encountered with the Department of Community Housing (DCH). These issues have manifested in Council meetings where Community members have taken to the podium to report on lost applications, names being removed from waiting lists, preferential treatment and years lost as elderly have passed on while waiting for their homes to be built.
As both a Community elder and Governor of the tribe, Rhodes has lent a sympathetic ear to the plights of those who are frustrated with the perceived bureaucratic mismanagement of DCH but he maintains the hard fast position that applicants for homes must abide by DCH policy while realizing that GRIC can only operate within its proposed budgetary constraints.
In light of the suspension of the Residential Home Improvement Plan (RHIP) which took place back in early Jan ‘10, a program that utilizes tribal funds to improve or construct homes, Governor Rhodes implemented the Quality Assurance Team (QAT) to oversee the application process in regard to acquiring a RHIP home.
The responsibility of the QAT is to ensure compliance with Community Council approved RHIP policy. After the district housing committees and DCH review applications, the QAT steps in to provide further review.
These are steps the Governor’s administration has taken to address issues like preferential treatment and adherence to prioritization of applicants, which ultimately belong with the elderly, handicapped and disabled.
Although the Governor takes Community concerns seriously he also has to take them with a grain of salt. There have been cases where disabled elders have come before Council in dire need of housing and have been granted homes based on extenuating individual circumstances. In these cases, the granting of homes has been justifiable.
According to the Governor, it would seem that a single, disabled elder would only need a one or two bedroom home based on the circumstance of a live-in caretaker. In the aforementioned case, he looked into the notes from the Council meeting that stated the requestor was granted a four-bedroom home.
“That’s not right. It shouldn’t be a four or five bedroom home for an elderly, handicapped or special needs,” Governor Rhodes said. “They might need a two bedroom house if the person has a home care assistant.”
Upon further attention to the details of the notes, it ended up that the elder wanted to also accommodate all of his/her children.
“After that one meeting, I told Housing that we’re not entertaining anymore of these kinds of individual requests. We have a schedule set up for each district’s housing plan which will clearly catch them up and put them to where they need to be,” he said. “I also informed the council that we’re not going to entertain any special conditions. We’re going to stick to this schedule and sooner than later they will see that they will have housing.”
Governor Rhodes maintains that the Community must be patient and let DCH work according to plans that have been put in place; plans that are based on the financial situation of the Community.
Quite simply, revenues are down during these times of national recession. “Because the recession hit, the money is not there. It’s not coming in like it was,” he said, “We’re not the only ones, it’s happening nationwide.”
It is true that some people have been waiting for years and some even decades. It is also a fact that there are issues that need to be sorted out within GRIC’s DCH before operations will run at their optimum capacity.
Yet, in spite of all the obstacles, the Governor persists to keep housing construction moving along according to schedule.
“Since the new administration has been here we’ve made a big change that I don’t believe would ever have happened if this administration hadn’t got in. I’m not talking about me alone. It’s my staff. I have good staff that knows how to do the work and get things done.”
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