Officials promise closer supervision
 

	Michael Alva
	Stan Jones Sr.

Officials of the Tulalip Tribes have promised to monitor their housing authority more closely but defended the agency's construction of a spacious house for its executive director and her family.

"As long as they pay for it, I have no problem with it," Tribal Chairman Stan Jones Sr. said Friday.

He was responding to a Seattle Times investigation that detailed how a 5,296-square-foot home was built with part of a $2.5 million grant for low-income housing.

The executive director and her husband, a housing-authority employee, have now paid the housing authority $214,000 for the home under an agreement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which raised questions earlier this year about the appropriateness of building such a large home in a subsidized housing program.

HUD's inspector general's office is just completing an audit to determine the full cost of the home to the housing authority. Under an agreement with HUD, the difference is supposed to be made up indirectly by the tribes through a contribution to the housing authority, because the couple have said they can't afford to pay more than they already have.

However, Jones said the tribes will not pay the difference, which he said will have to come out of the couple's salaries.

John McCoy, the tribes' executive director of government affairs, said leaders "will be reviewing all the procedures and the (housing authority's) internal controls, and there will be modification of those controls so this kind of thing doesn't happen again."

"But I hope that, eventually, Native Americans will be allowed to have homes that are better than the 1950s-style cracker-box houses that HUD used to build."

A housing-authority statement assailed The Times articles as unfairly highlighting the home and promised to build "more homes of superior scale and quality for Tribal members at all income levels."

Calling the coverage "sensationalistic," the statement said that the useable living space in the home is "approximately 4,700 square feet." HUD records say the house has 5,296 square feet of finished space.

The average American home is 1,800 square feet.

The statement said the couple, Patti Gobin and Michael Alva, needed the space because they plan to house extended family. Alva said two children and a brother are living with them. They plan to have Gobin's parents move in, the statement said.

The house was by far the largest of 18 homes built with the grant from the Mutual Help program. The program is aimed at low-income households, and participants' incomes average $18,300 a year.

Gobin and Alva have a combined income of $92,000 a year, HUD officials said.

HUD regulations allow five higher-income families in each project if the housing authority can show no other homes are available to them on the reservation. Although private, middle-income housing is available at Tulalip, HUD officials said the policy at the time was to include higher-income households regardless of whether there was a need.

Mutual Help participants can own their homes after paying 15 percent of their monthly income for a period of years - usually 15 to 25.

They can also buy the houses outright from the housing authority with private financing. Under new rules, housing authorities can set whatever price they want, and many choose to sell the homes for less than they cost. The theory is that this helps lower-income families qualify for loans.

Housing-authority officials said that's the option the couple intended to take from the start. HUD records show the couple would have received up to a $60,000 discount - paid for with low-income housing funds.

HUD stepped in and pressured them into paying for the house without the discount, because the structure was so large. Although HUD regulations don't set a limit on size, they call for a "moderate" design; however, HUD policy leaves it up to housing authorities to determine what is moderate. In this case, the housing-authority statement said, officials considered the house moderate for the family size.

Nonetheless, at HUD's urging, the couple paid for the house with a federally insured loan and $57,000 of their own money. The housing authority used the money to build three low-income homes, Alva said.