NHA, NECA partnership: leveraging resources

By Nicholas House
Navajo Times

Part II

WINDOW ROCK – The Navajo Housing Authority and Navajo Engineering and Construction Authority partnership is to “leverage resources,” said NHA Chief Operating Officer Ernest Franklin Jr. This is the first partnership of its size between two Navajo Nation enterprises, raising the building capacity of the Navajo Nation.

Under NHA CEO Heather Duncan-Etsitty’s lead, this new direction has prospects to include other enterprises such as Indian Health Services and Navajo Tribal Utility Authority later down the road. This aids by cutting down the preliminary steps and contracting before projects start, creating better communication and building resources and a common platform.

“Coming in really, my foundation was fixing us (NHA),” said Duncan-Etsitty, who You can’t have a productive team if you’re unstable,” said Duncan-Etsitty, who began her leadership Oct. 30, 2023. “This lead has revitalized the inner communication between NHA’s management offices in the Navajo Nation. She continued, “NHA also changed a long list of in-house policies, training, and bringing in new hires (such) as a customer service coordinator to dissipate and address complaints, questions, and concerns. “My biggest area is customer service internally, externally: how we treat each other internally and how we treat our customers externally. I feel for too long we’ve (NHA) neglected the people that keep us employed––the individuals we house, the future tenants, the future homebuyers.”

NHA partnership

NHA is the tribal-designated housing entity funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through grants. NHA announced Aug. 13 that the 2025 Indian Housing Plan, which outlines $97.2 million in new housing and projects over $125 million in housing expenditures, was submitted ahead of schedule to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“So, when you’re dealing with a funding source like that expects you to spend that money in a 12-month period, you have to look for resources that know how to do it,” Franklin explained. “When Heather started, we launched over 130 million dollars in contracts, and those contracts consist of (renovations for) existing houses that are very old.

Also building new houses to add to our housing stock and dealing with the supporting infrastructures: roads, utility systems, and any other institutions that need to be established in the community.”

Franklin continued: “So, when we (NHA) issued out those contracts, we have to work within the Navajo Preference (in Employment Act) arena and it’s very limited.

“We (NHA) have to make sure our contractors – because we’re working with federal funds – have to meet the bonding. To make sure that the company (contractors) is technically capable of doing the job that we are going to be giving them. They also have to show financial capacity, making sure that they are a stable company.”

After contracts can show they are competent in the task NHA awards them, then NHA is given a green light to use the federal bonds.

This funding as well as insurance for projects and companies are the general criteria for NHA to issue out contracts.

“When you look at those – priority 1 and priority 2 – contractors that have that capability, there’s very limited amount there and with the Navajo Nation having the American Rescue Plan (Act) funding, they got over 3 billion dollars.

“We’re over here working with 100 million dollars a year and you also have IHS entering in place (development funding), and you have NTUA and other entities all operating at this area (Development on Navajo Nation).”

Franklin has determined for priority 1 and priority 2 NHA contractors, the bonding limit and insurance is around $250 million to $275 million. “We’ve saturated that market (contractors under NEPA), everyone is at capacity. So, you have all these other contractors coming in—(example) BITCO. BITCO is a new player in this whole (development) market. They’re bringing in new resources,” Franklin said.

Contractors around Nation

NHA has multiple projects ongoing currently with these contractors around the Navajo Nation: Window Rock, Ojo Encino, Crownpoint, Mariano Lake, and an upcoming project in Chinle and in Navajo, New Mexico. NHA is also fixing past housing developments that are now in floodplain areas.

Some of these developments are now in floodplain areas due to the lack of maintenance for the diversions dams placed by the BIA that no one is taking care of anymore. NHA also faces many other pre-existing complications that slow down new development, minimize budgets on new projects, and take away contractors for new development.

New development

NHA – now stacked with several new developments, maintaining past development issues and NHA communities – needs a construction entity to aid their projects.

Franklin said, “That’s where NECA comes in. This is their bread and butter. They are one of Navajo Nation’s enterprises. Why can’t we use them?

“We were looking to be a part of our additional resources with our priority 1 contractors to continue to build. Like we said, we have all this money coming in and we have to continue to build and move forward. That is the primary reason why we wanted to enter into an agreement with NECA: to increase our construction resources out there.

“Not only to build more houses, but to take care of our flooding issues, increase our utility capacity in the areas, address (the conditions of) our streets, and address any other issues we have within our subdivisions.” Franklin added, “Especially our home ownership subdivisions that are lacking improvements.”

NHA also faces many vacant homes as well as homes that have been burned down by tenants.

This new partnership allows NECA to assist only in infrastructure “horizontal construction” projects within the subdivision that are near the ground, such as sewer lagoons and road repairs.

NHA’s and NECA’s new partnership does not allow NECA to assist in “vertical construction,” such as the physical building of homes. As this new partnership grows, the enterprises do look forward to furthering their mutual construction assistance and how this can lead to more partnerships to create a common platform for Navajo enterprises.

NHA is also looking to build a relationship with IHS. Franklin said, “IHS does all the designs in water and utility assistance. So, we talked to IHS. We are now entering into an agreement that is similar to this (NHA and NECA partnership) … on how we can leverage each other’s resources to build the building capacity on Navajo Nation.”

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