The Navajo Nation encompasses 27,000 miles in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. On the reservation, steeped in history and customs, there are also challenges when it comes to housing, to supplies and lumber, to hookups to clean running water. Add in a national pandemic and the challenges grow exponentially. So does determination to meet them.
That determination is in the DNA of Native Partnership for Housing (NPH), a NeighborWorks network organization situated in Gallup, New Mexico. With a small staff, the office works as a mortgage lender and provides financial education from its office near the border of the Navajo reservation. A new construction subsidiary serves to train Native American workers, creating middle-income jobs and building middle-income housing on the reservation.
"There's no question, it slowed down our progress," Rollin Wood, executive director, says of the pandemic. "It slowed down the supply chain." Meanwhile, staff members, construction workers and the Native community have tried to deal with grief. "One day I was on the job site and as I went back to my office, just a 35-minute drive, I passed three funeral processions."
Today, while some localities have seen a decline in the spread of COVID-19, the Navajo Nation continues to issue health advisories throughout the expansive nation, from Aneth to Whippoorwill. Over the past 20 months at NPH, staff members became ill with coronavirus, in spite of taking numerous precautions. "All of us know someone who passed away," Wood says. "I live in a constant state of paranoia. I use Lysol on the bottom of my shoes. I still won't go to a gas station without using a surgical glove to pump fuel."
How do you keep an office going in these circumstances? "We honor our families," Wood says. "The needs of our families come first." And that's kept workers coming back to help the community move forward.
Wood has driven miles to procure masks, to ensure his crew is safe. NPH bought gallons of hand sanitizer from a distillery in Albuquerque to dispense to the construction crew. When one person was sick, the other took over. Wood credits Priscilla Otero, CFO, for keeping day-to-day operations moving.
"We did what we had to do to safeguard against COVID-19," Otero says of NPH's leaders. "We just kept going, working no matter how serious the pandemic was ravaging the Navajo Nation." And the staff continued on their mission to create homes and a pathway for tribal members to own them.
Next week, read about the first loan through NPH, and how the NeighborWorks network organization found its niche.
11/24/2021
