Senate Indian Affairs Committee advances Native housing rewrite to full Senate

The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs approved a rewrite of the federal law that pays for housing in Alaska Native villages and tribal communities on Wednesday, sending it to the full Senate. The law has not been reauthorized or updated in 13 years.

Chair Lisa Murkowski made the Alaska case for it: overcrowding, construction costs that run far above anywhere else, homelessness, and the trouble villages have housing the teachers, health aides and law enforcement officers they need, people she described as "making a little too much to qualify for some assistance programs."

The bill addresses that group directly. Tribes, tribally designated housing entities and the Department of Hawaiian Homelands could put up to 20 percent of their homeownership assistance toward families earning as much as 120 percent of area median income, which is where those essential workers tend to fall.

It would reauthorize the Indian Housing Block Grant and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant through 2033, add lease-to-own pathways and stronger loan guarantees, and extend support to Native veterans and to unhoused American Indians, Native Hawaiians and Alaska Natives. Vice Chairman Brian Schatz said the years without reauthorization have left Native communities unable to plan or build for the long term.

The committee also adopted a Murkowski amendment raising a spending threshold in the law from $5,000 to $22,500, with room for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to allow more for good cause. Both the amendment and the bill passed by voice vote, with no opposition recorded.

This is the second time around. Schatz noted the Senate passed the same reauthorization 86 to 11 in 2023, attached to that year's defense bill, and asked colleagues to send it "out of the Senate for a second time." It never became law. Murkowski introduced this version Aug. 6. It now waits on floor time, and would still have to clear the House.