Roots of housing controversy go back to WWII

It was just a couple of months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and activity at the Fort Wingate Army Depot was picking up.

The U.S. was moving quickly to fight a war on two fronts and ammunition was desperately needed. One of the places this ammunition was coming from was Fort Wingate and the Army was hiring dozens of Navajos to aid in the mission.

The problem was - where would they live?

For a time, workers and their families camped on surrounding hills. The Army's solution was to slap together 40 barrack-type houses in Church Rock, N.M.

 The Army had surveyed housing in Gallup and concluded there just wasn't enough of it to meet wartime needs.

The Army didn't want to house the workers too close to the depot - in case of an enemy attack - so the most convenient place was some federal land that was available a few miles east of Gallup.

According to later reports, the houses went up quickly, within the space of a couple of months - no effort at quality was made since the units were only to be used during the war and would be decommissioned and destroyed after that.

But things didn't go as planned and the plight of Navajo families facing eviction from their homes in Church Rock is rooted in the space between government intentions and the practical realities of Navajo life.

Indian Village

The barracks weren't torn down after the war. Instead, they were occupied by Navajos who wanted to continue living in them, and who did continue living in the old "Indian Village" for decades.

The Army turned the property over to the BIA, which at some point turned it over the Navajo Nation.

By 2000, a concerted effort was underway to build modern housing at Church Rock, and the Indian Village families were told they could move into the new housing.

In 2002, what was left of the old barracks - which had been remodeled by families over years - were finally being torn down to make room for the new housing.

But there were families that had hung on through three decades of efforts by the federal government to get them out of the steadily deteriorating old buildings.

Tribal and BIA officials said in the 1970s that the families just moved in after the Army abandoned the buildings after the war, but the families had a different story. They said that originally the units were rented out to people in the Gallup area and it wasn't until the buildings were condemned that the government, either federal or tribal, began an effort to evict the families and tear down the structures.

While families were willing to continue to pay reasonable rents, they said no one would accept it, probably because the acceptance of rent would incur legal liability for the landlord and require improvements and repairs, which would have cost more than the rents brought in.

By this time, tribal officials were referring to the Indian Village as an eyesore and by the 1990s, the decision was reached to tear them down and build low-rent housing in their place.

No one, however, could get the people to leave and there were newspaper stories in the 1990s and early 2000s about demonstrations and marches, led by resident Mervyn Tilden, a local activist, and others.

Tilden argued that it was unfair for anyone to force his family to leave because they had lived there for so long that they had acquired legal possession of it. As for the substandard conditions, Tilden said his family was willing to put up with the conditions rather than having to move and pay rent.

High rents

And indeed, families that moved into the new housing found themselves facing rents that were higher than they could handle.

The families recalled that Navajo housing officials promised the rents would be affordable, and that under a rent-to-own program they would eventually own their new homes. The new homes would also provide better living conditions for their children, which, for some, was the selling point.

Another thing that seemed to help was the decision by the Navajo Housing Authority not to move any family until their new houses became available. As families moved into their new homes, they became advocates to the other families to give up their own homes and join them.

Most, if not all, of the families who moved from the Indian Village signed up to be "rent to own" tenants. Their rents, which were subsidized by the federal government, would be applied to the house purchase. Some of the rents were as low as $40 or $50 a month and were based on income and other criteria.

By 2004, a total of 84 families had signed rent-to-own agreements.

The problems that led to the current predicament occurred in 2005 when the Fort Defiance Housing Corp., which managed the subdivision under a contract with NHA, went bankrupt.

FDHC subsequently was reorganized as Sandstone Housing and resumed management of the Church Rock housing.

According to Sandstone officials, the bankruptcy court allowed the company to terminate a number of the rent-to-own agreements because the tenants were not living up to their part in the agreement, mostly by falling behind on their rent.

When the rent-to-own agreements were terminated, a number of Navajo families - as many as 20 to 25 - saw their rents jump from under $100 a month to $700 or more a month. They also lost the opportunity to one day own their homes.

Ten or 11 families of the families refused to pay the higher rents, and were served with eviction notices. Some got lawyers who instructed them to continue paying the fees required under their rent-to-own agreement, and this money was placed into escrow until the courts could resolve the matter.

Court rules for Sandstone

That was the status of things until Dec. 16, when the Navajo Nation Supreme Court ruled in favor of Sandstone. The families had until Dec. 28 at 5 p.m. to pay the new rents or leave.

In a conversation Sunday, Patrick Sandoval, chief of staff for President Joe Shirley Jr., said the Navajo government was looking into the situation, not only because families were evicted in Church Rock but because Navajos living in other parts of the reservation could face the same problem.

Sandoval, however, rejected comparisons between Sandstone and credit card companies that promise a low rate, and then raise the rate at the first opportunity.

Sandoval said there was a difference between that scenario and what happened to the Navajo families evicted at Church Rock. Late rent payments did not cause the rent-to-own agreements to be voided until FDHC went bankrupt - for unrelated reasons - and the contracts were taken over by Sandstone.

The question that the tribe has to determine, he said, is whether the Navajo families were aware that the original agreements could have been voided for violations like missing rent payments.

Back to top ^