‘Enough is enough’ Bitter Springs tenants say NHA homes are falling apart

BITTER SPRINGS, Ariz.

Along U.S. Route 89, the Bitter Springs housing tract shows its age – cracks underfoot, water in the walls, rooms packed tight. Residents want help, not more patchwork.

“Enough is enough,” said Loretta Seweingyawma, the Bodaway-Gap Chapter vice president. “The problem is these houses are falling apart now.”

Built in phases beginning in the mid-1980s, the Navajo Housing Authority units were offered under terms residents say they accepted in good faith – monthly payments, no expectation that the builder would return for major fixes – only to discover decades later that cracked slabs, failing roofs, and burst pipes would become their burden alone.

Seweingyawma said many buyers then worked at the Navajo Generating Station in LeChee, Arizona, and signed quickly because housing in the area was scarce.

“They signed and they agreed to NHA’s condition that they move in, and they pay for these homes, not knowing that these homes were not going to have warranty or they’re not long lasting,” she said. “Then the NGS shut down and then we don’t have an income. We don’t have employment…. And the problem is these houses are falling apart now.”

Residents describe repair bills that dwarf their budgets – “a complete $40,000 renovation for a whole new floor,” “a $20,000 renovation for a whole new roof,” or “$600 for a window or a door.”

Some households crowd seven or eight people into one or two bedrooms, with “no space at all,” Seweingyawma said. Outside, roadways through the compound are “well damaged,” and families say they have struggled for years to get help.

Water shoots from walls. The houses keep breaking

Dorothy Lee, a homeowner who has lived in Bitter Springs for four decades, keeps boxes of documents that trace the housing site’s origins to 1970s community meetings led by the late Council Delegate Harry Sloan Sr. The first 50 homes went up. Later, an additional 25 were built to the north.

“So, seventy-five homes,” Lee said.

Today, she said, age has caught up with the structures. “The floors are a good example. There are cracks. The walls are beginning to crack. And piping, they’re all underground. The first fifty homes, they all have concrete floors. So, we can’t dig in there and find out where the pipes are,” Lee said.

A recent break made the problem impossible to ignore. Lee said her granddaughter ran out to report water spraying from a bedroom wall, soaking the mattress, and the family quickly realized a pipe had burst.

Lee’s husband, who has health limitations, “just touched the wall, and it created a hole,” then hurried to make a stopgap repair after Lee drove to Page, about 20 miles away, for supplies. “That’s how bad our homes are,” she said. Ceilings, she added, “are the same … the ceiling has come down” in many units.

Lee said she and her husband worked for years to pay off their home – she in chapter government and social services, he in various jobs – and that many neighbors did the same by selling jewelry and crafts along U.S. 89 when times were lean.

“We worked really hard and bought homes. NGS and Peabody’s Kayenta Mine closed, then we had the landslide on U.S. 89 … our money depleted,” she said in Navajo. “We have a lot of single mothers. And they can’t climb up on the roof and fix it.”

To read the full article, please see the Sept. 25, 2025, edition of the Navajo Times.

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