What's new in Ocean Shores?
Quinault: Meeting the needs of our people
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DAILY WORLD / KEVIN HONG Karen Hawks shares a tiny room at the Sandstone Motel in Hoquiam with her husband Leonard, their grown daughter and her fiancee. Their combined income is about $900 each month.
“You're Quinault, right?”
Christine Coffelt, a school psychologist who contracts with the Taholah School District, has her antennae out. But it was still remarkable how often during the Point in Time count she divined Quinault ancestry from the people she counted.
“There are 3,000 tribal members and not enough housing,” said Melissa Underwood, director of the Department of Social Services for the Quinault Indian Nation.
Underwood said there is a distinct lack of low-income housing, and people who get an inexpensive place to live tend to stay there. Slots rarely open, she said, and there are people who are on the list for low-income housing for four, five, even 10 years.
Underwood said the list doesn't prioritize families with children, though she wishes it did — her extended family has been affected by the housing shortage and her brother and his two daughters have both doubled up with her and spent time living in motels.
Freda Charles, housing manager with the Quinault Housing Authority, said there were 133 Quinault families — possibly “200 to 300 people,” Charles estimated — and 42 elders waiting for a place to live.
The agency manages a total of 126 units, with 15 set aside for elders.
“There's definitely a shortage,” Charles said.
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DAILY WORLD / KEVIN HONG Carolann Garcia was living in a Hoquiam motel at the time of the homeless count, but was packing up her belongings and preparing to move to more permanent housing.
It's possible to move up the list a little faster by taking a class in financial management, Charles said, but the reality is that more families want to live on the reservation than already live there.
The housing authority is working on increasing its housing stock; Charles said a new development will add 61 homes, and 14 have already been built. They will be mixed-income, include rental apartments, and some of the houses will be available for purchase. The tribe has an “up and out” program to get responsible renters into homes, and a “Mutual Help” program that allows low-income families to purchase a home on a 20-year mortgage, paying 15 percent of their income on it, setting aside another 15 percent of their income for maintenance. The housing authority subsidizes the rest of the home's cost.
Charles said the agency gets its budget from the federal Housing and Urban Development Agency. Hopefully, she said, the casino will eventually augment the budget.
“We know we are not meeting the needs of our people,” Charles said.