The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority has awarded the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe $1.5 million over the next three years to develop housing master plans for reservation towns and to build and repair homes.
The tribe lacks about 200 homes for tribal members, and housing plans are needed for Towaoc and White Mesa. The tribe has about 2,100 members.
Members will take part in the master plan process through surveys and community meetings, said Bernadette Cuthair, the tribe’s director of Planning and Development.
A $300,000 CFHA grant awarded to the tribe in 2021 for the Tiwahe Home Improvement Project provided repairs for eight homes in two years, according to a news release.
Homes on the reservation are evaluated for repairs, Cuthair said. Homes with serious repair and safety problems are prioritized, and Weminuche Construction does the repair and construction work.
Insufficient housing increased the spread of COVID-19 on the reservation, tribal officials said.
Although the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe does not experience homelessness on an urban scale, one family home may house several generations of one family.
This housing crisis intensified the spread of COVID-19 between 2020 and 2022 in part because of the high population per home.
The planning documents will help generate an estimated $25 million to $50 million in grant funding by 2027 for home repairs and construction, said Ute Mountain Ute Chairman Manuel Heart, in a news release.
“Our funding partners will work with us to generate the funding needed for housing once we have detailed housing plans in place,” Heart said. “Up until now, we have lacked funding to develop detailed housing plans for both tribal communities. We are ever so grateful to CHFA for visiting us, seeing the need and making the investment in our people.”
Although the tribe has had a housing shortage for years, the COVID-19 pandemic heightened the need for housing repairs and alternative funding, tribe officials said.
The pandemic also deepened reservation poverty and unemployment rates.
“Investment in housing infrastructure will help ease the current downturn and create new jobs while preparing the reservation to be more resilient to future natural disasters,” the news release stated.
