2.1.1  Alaska

Alaska Housing Finance Corporation. “2018 Alaska Housing Assessment: Statewide Housing Summary.” Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, January 17, 2018. https://www.ahfc.us/application/files/3115/1638/5454/2018_Statewide_Housing_Assessment_-_Part_1_-_Executive_Summary_and_Housing_Needs_011718.pdf.

The 2018 Alaska Housing Assessment highlights current and projected housing challenges surrounding affordability, energy use, and structural conditions from a “statewide, regional and community perspective.” This report found that more than half of all households in rural Alaska were overcrowded, which is twice the national average. Nearly 79,000 households were cost-burdened, meaning occupants spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. Approximately 14,600 housing units were energy inefficient (“one-star houses”), burdening residents with high costs and/or uncomfortable living conditions (usually, too cold). The current rate of housing construction is insufficient to keep pace with Alaska’s projected population, and furthermore the demand for senior facility beds is increasing with the number of residents over 65 expected to double by 2030.

Pindus, Nancy M., and G. Thomas Kingsley. “Affordability Is Not the Main Problem with Housing in Indian Country.” Urban Institute, March 29, 2017. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/affordability-not-main-problem-housing-indian-country.

Drawing from a 2017 HUD survey, this blog post showcases the unique regional housing issues faced by those living in tribal areas of the U.S. physical housing problems tend to be much more severe than cost burdens for many American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) households, with 34 percent having at least one problem with physical facilities, condition, or overcrowding, compared with only 7 percent of U.S. households. Facilities problems included plumbing, kitchen, electrical, and heating issues. “The share of AIAN households in tribal areas with plumbing or kitchen deficiencies or overcrowding was highest in Alaska (36 percent).”

“Housing Needs of American Indians and Alaska Natives in Tribal Areas: A Report From the Assessment of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Housing Needs: Executive Summary | HUD USER.” Accessed June 28, 2021. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/HousingNeedsAmerIndians-ExecSumm.html.

A 2017 study on American Indian and Alaska Native housing conditions and policies in tribal areas confirmed that homelessness in tribal areas often translates into overcrowding rather than having people sleeping on the street. The report estimated that, at the time of the household survey in 2013–2015, “between 42,000 and 85,000 people in tribal areas were staying with friends or relatives only because they had no place of their own; that is, they were homeless” (6). Only 19 percent of the heads of these households said they would ask these people to leave, but the vast majority (80 percent) of the people involved would like to get a place of their own if they could.

This study confirmed a strong preference for homeownership in tribal areas: 90 percent of renters “would prefer to own their own home (and 90 percent of them said they would contribute their own labor if it would enable them to do so)”(8). The report also identified numerous financial barriers to home ownership: lack of capital but also lack of access to mortgage lenders and unfamiliarity with financing.

Lerner, Julia. “Housing Crisis in Nome: Homeless, Not Hopeless.” Nome Nugget, July 22, 2021. http://www.nomenugget.net/news/housing-crisis-nome-homeless-not-hopeless.

This news article situates Nome’s homelessness and addiction crises in the context of rising regional poverty, employment and housing shortages, mental health issues, physical health issues, and historical trauma.

Christensen, Julia. ‘Our home, our way of life’: spiritual homelessness and the sociocultural dimensions of Indigenous homelessness in the Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada, Social & Cultural Geography 14, No. 7 (2013): 804-828. DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2013.822089.

Drawing on several years of ethnographic research and a case study in Canada’s Northwest territories, Christensen explores Indigenous experiences of homelessness. Key themes articulated by research participants include “social and material exclusion, breakdowns in family and community, detachment from cultural identity, intergenerational trauma and institutionalisation” (804). The author explains how dominant understandings of Indigenous homelessness are “unsituated” in that they focus solely on the individual scale, rather than within a system of ongoing colonization. Christensen concludes that conceptualizing these forms of displacement as “spiritual homelessness” implies that the “alleviation of Indigenous homelessness requires a two-pronged decolonising agenda: one that aims to specifically address contemporary colonial geographies and their social and material expressions in Indigenous peoples’ lives, and at the same time supports individual and collective home-building through culturally rooted, self-determined support frameworks” (823).

Radio Canada International (RCI)/ CBCCC News. “Teachers Nix Jobs in North Canada Due to Housing.” Eye on the Arctic (blog), May 2, 2013. https://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/2013/05/02/teachers-nix-jobs-in-north-canada-due-to-housing/.

This article examines the results of a report from the Northwest Territories Teachers’ Association. Findings show a lack of adequate housing has led to a shortage of teachers in many communities in Canada’s Northwest Territories, with over 44 percent of job offers turned down for this reason. The report found that only about 60 percent of teachers “feel they have adequate housing” and “almost half of teachers spend at least a third of their pre-tax income on housing.”

Frizzell, Sarah. “Housing Crisis in Canada’s East-Arctic Worsens as Homes Become Too Old to Live In.” Eye on the Arctic (blog), December 17, 2018. https://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/2018/12/17/nunavut-housing-public-canada-crisis-renovation-repair/.

This article highlights issues in Nunavut, where “nearly half the public housing is more than 30 years old” and the territory is short 3,000 public housing units (not accounting for a growing population). It explains that many housing issues go unaddressed because the housing organizations responsible for repairs are short-staffed. Cost is also a significant barrier, and complex repairs are outside the skill range of local labor. Grant money to improve “livability conditions”—something that would allow local housing organizations more flexibility in the repairs they make—is unavailable.

2.1.2  Other Communities

Jackson, Jeanine R., and Crystal Saric Fashant. “Native American Homelessness and Minneapolis’ Infamous Tent City: Dispelling Myths and Stereotypes to Uncover Solutions.” Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs 7 No. 1 (April 1, 2021): 129–53. https://doi.org/10.20899/jpna.7.1.129-153.

This article examines how residents of Minneapolis’ “Tent City” were mischaracterized as “Native American drug users” and how stereotypes surrounding homeless communities lead to inappropriate solutions. The author also examines the systemic roots of homelessness in poverty and oppression, reframing conventionally problematic/”antisocial” behaviors as components of an “adaptive survival system.”