“The utilities provide safe drinking water to the homes and safe wastewater disposal, enabling residents to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance for stopping the spread of germs by frequently washing hands,” Beveridge said. The grant program also supports water and sanitation projects in remote Alaska Native communities, helping residents have “safe, sustainable piped water and reliable sewer services,” said David Beveridge with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, which serves several communities that will receive the funding.įrom providing drinking water for the first time to Lime residents to protecting Kwethluk’s water source from river erosion, Alaska villages will use funds to improve safety and health of their community members, Beveridge said. For example, Allakaket will construct five units to provide temporary shelter, and the Nulato community will renovate the former National Guard Armory to provide space for quarantining. Protecting village residents’ healthīesides building new homes, the funds will be used to build temporary shelters where COVID-positive residents can quarantine, according to HUD. “What people call ‘overcrowding’ in rural Alaska Native villages is an expression of what would be recognized as unsheltered homelessness in urban areas,” Hagle added. The rate of overcrowding in the village is more than 73%, according to the 2017 American Housing Survey.
HOUSE BUILDING ESTIMATE ANCHORAGE ZIP
Hagle said that “Point Lay is, by a wide margin, the most severely overcrowded village” in the Northwest and “undoubtedly one of the most overcrowded ZIP codes in the United States.” For the time of construction, these six households will move to rental housing in either Point Lay or Utqiagvik. The schoolhouse, built in 1975 and converted to apartments, houses about 10% of Point Lay residents - 27 people, including 15 children - who “shelter there in squalor out of extreme desperation,” according to the project description. In Point Lay, the money will be combined with other funding to demolish a dilapidated former schoolhouse and build three new duplexes. “The award could not have been more welcome,” said Hagle, the housing authority’s executive director. In Northwest Alaska, six duplexes and five housing units will be built by tribes and the Taġiuġmiullu Nunamiullu Housing Authority. (Photo courtesy of Tagiugmiullu Nunamiullu Housing Authority) Building new homes The bottom of the utility service barrel used to rest on the ground that would have reached up to my shoulder the black trunk would have been buried then. Griffin Hagle stands in a spot where the ground subsided beneath a Point Lay home in October 2019.
HOUSE BUILDING ESTIMATE ANCHORAGE PLUS
“The money is really targeted to prevent, prepare for and respond to COVID-19, but we’re really seeing it used to address that, plus just the systemic ongoing needs that Indian country has had for housing and infrastructure,” she said. They will also use the money to improve water and sewer infrastructure, Frechette said. The tribal communities are using the new funding to build new homes, clinics and shelters to quarantine COVID-positive people. If you don’t have running water and indoor plumbing, it’s very hard to wash your hands frequently.” “When you have severe overcrowding, it’s very hard to isolate folks who become COVID-positive. “Existing conditions exacerbated the impacts of the pandemic in Indian country,” said Heidi Frechette, who works for Native American Programs in the department’s Office of Public and Indian Housing. That’s on top of the first round of funding announced in November: $74 million for 68 tribal communities, half of which are in Alaska.
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Department of Housing and Urban Development last week announced that 49 tribal communities, including 18 in Alaska, would receive a total of $52 million through the Indian Community Block Grant program under the American Rescue Plan.
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Last month, Point Lay became one of the villages that received funds to address severe housing shortages, improve health and safety and better water and sewer infrastructure. Many Point Lay buildings are in disrepair, but residents still live there because a housing shortage means there aren’t any alternatives, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The rapidly warming Arctic climate has been driving ice-rich soil to subside for the past 20 years, and by 2019, previously buried pipes were sticking out from the ground stretching taller than Hagle. Griffin Hagle stood near a house in Point Lay, looking at the exposed utility pipe and pilings beneath it. Updated: DecemPublished: December 12, 2021