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- By Elyse Wild
The worst part about Jeri Robertson’s job is turning people away.
In her five years as the housing manager for the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation in Northern California, which crosses state borders overlapping Northern California and Southern Oregon, Robertson has witnessed skyrocketing rents, overcrowded homes, waiting lists that are years-long, and families caught between services with nowhere to go.
Now, she is hopeful that a $1.25 million grant from the Bezos Day One Fund, turning people away will be a thing of the past. The funds are aimed at solutions to homelessness. The Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation was the only tribe among 32 award recipients.
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking when you have to turn somebody down,” Robertson told Native News Online. “Everybody deserves to have a home, and I think this grant is going to give us the opportunity to make that happen.”
The U.S. housing bubble of 2008, high lumber prices, stagnant wages and complicated zoning laws have left the nation short 7 million homes for low-income renters, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
California, which is home to the largest population of Native Americans, accounts for 1.4 million homes in the shortage.
For tribal communities, the housin crisis is exacerbated by limited resources stemming from jurisdictional webs, strained infrastructure, economic inequality and exclusion from targeted efforts to combat homelessness.
The Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation Housing Division provides resources to citizens of all federally recognized tribes, with preference to its Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation citizens. Many reside in Del Norte and Humboldt Counties — where the average rent is $1,600 and $2,000 — and Curry, Coos, and Josephine Counties in Oregon. The tribes ancestral lands hug the north west coast of California, an area famed for its coastal trails, towering redwood trees and rugged beaches. It also houses Pelican Bay State Prison, where entry-level employees earn more than that state’s $16.50 minimum wage.
With homes being turned into Airbnbs and landlords catering to higher-earning renters, many tribal citizens are left in limbo.
“For a normal everyday person with the everyday job, housing has just gotten very unaffordable, and then there’s just the lack of it,” Roberston said.
When Roberston started working for the tribe in 2020, she noticed something alarming while managing the waiting list for the 70 housing units it operates.
“People were sitting on these wait lists for way too long,” she said. “Their status was homeless. They were staying with different family members, which, in a lot of cases, then puts those individuals at risk of their housing, because landlords don’t want people stacking up and that can create more problems for people.”
She often referred tribal members to county resources, hoping to mitigate wait lists and reduce the amount of time people spent in crisis. When she followed up with clients, she was disheartened to hear the same story over and over again.
“A lot of people told me they would be turned away, they would be told ‘go check with your tribe,’” she said.
Robertson and her staff shifted focus to holistically address an individual’s housing needs. This included looking at barriers such as employment, mental health, or disability. At times, support meant they stayed by a client’s side as they moved through various resources on a journey to housing stability, helping them navigate barriers along the way, like transportation.
Now, with the new funding, they can expand those services to meet people before they are in crisis.
“We’re going to be able to be more proactive. We haven’t had funding for outreach before, and so unfortunately, we tend to find people when they’re truly in a really bad crisis,” she said. “The hope is that we can identify some of these issues and barriers and be able to move people into housing quickly, because the longer you are homeless, the harder it is to find housing."
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