On the Tulalip Indian Reservation in Washington
state, taxpayers’ money administered by the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development built a 5,300-square-foot home for a
couple making $92,000 a year. That mansion soon became a symbol of
excess for a five-part Seattle Times series in December documenting
tribal housing scandals. Because of deregulation of tribal housing
offices, HUD officials were basically “asleep at the switch” while
corrupt tribal leaders from more than a dozen tribes built luxury
homes for themselves, their relatives and their friends, concludes
the Times. Meanwhile, nearly 100,000 Native Americans live in
substandard housing. The articles provoked a swift response.
Then-HUD director Henry Cisneros ordered an internal investigation
and at least three tribal housing leaders have since lost their
jobs.
Reprints of the series, Tribal Housing –
From Deregulation to Disgrace, are available for $2 from Tribal
Housing Reprints, Box 1926, Seattle, WA 98111. All the stories are
available for free on the World Wide Web,
http://www.seattletimes.
com/topstories/projects.html.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The houses that HUD built.
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