A Native American housing bill that would change mortgage rules for tribal homebuyers awaits Senate action on Indigenous Peoples Day, 30 years after Congress passed the main federal housing law for tribes.
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs approved S. 5354 on Sept. 23. The bill, the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Modernization Act of 2026, would reauthorize the 1996 law known as NAHASDA through fiscal year 2033, according to a summary from the National American Indian Housing Council.
“This is significant progress, but our work is not finished,” Rudy Soto, the council’s executive director, said in the release.
President Bill Clinton signed NAHASDA on Oct. 26, 1996, and the law reaches its 30th anniversary in two weeks. Its authorization expired in 2013, and Congress has funded its block grant year to year since.
What changes for lenders and agents
The provisions closest to the mortgage business involve the Section 184 Indian Home Loan Guarantee Program. Through it, the Department of Housing and Urban Development guarantees home loans that private lenders make to tribal members.
According to the bill text and the council’s summary, the bill would:
- Name tribal housing entities as eligible borrowers
- Allow qualified community development financial institutions to lend through the program
- Authorize HUD to delegate direct guarantee endorsement authority to eligible lenders
- Permit loan modifications of up to 40 years in certain circumstances
- Clarify that the loans can finance homes on trust land and fee-simple land
The changes would make the program available to more tribal citizens “regardless of where they live,” Cherokee Nation Deputy Principal Chief Bryan Warner said in written testimony to the committee. The Cherokee Nation is based in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
The bill would also extend residential leases on trust or restricted land from 50 years to 99 years. Trust land cannot serve as collateral, so a lender there takes a mortgage on the borrower’s leasehold interest, according to a handbook on tribal homeownership published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
Another provision would let tribes spend up to 20 percent of their annual grant on homeownership assistance for families earning up to 120 percent of area median income, up from the current 80 percent limit.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairs the committee and introduced the bill with Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii. At a Sept. 16 hearing, she said the income change is meant for teachers, health care workers and law enforcement officers who cannot afford to buy in their communities, according to a committee release.
Those families “may earn just a little too much to qualify under current limits,” Murkowski said.
The need the bill targets
Tribal lands need at least 68,000 additional homes to eliminate overcrowding and replace physically deficient housing, Warner told the committee. He cited a 2017 HUD assessment and called the estimate conservative because it predates recent inflation, population growth and rising construction costs.
A Cherokee Nation housing study found more than 6,000 households on waiting lists for housing services each month, Warner said. The tribe estimates it needs more than 8,800 additional housing units over the next decade, at a cost of about $1.75 billion.
NAHASDA has helped build, acquire and rehabilitate more than 160,000 homes over three decades, Hilary Atkin, HUD’s acting deputy assistant secretary for Native American programs, said in written testimony.
The 13 tribes and Native organizations the Government Accountability Office interviewed said the main use of federal housing programs is maintaining existing homes, with less going to new construction. They cited funding that has not kept pace with rising construction costs, according to preliminary observations the agency presented at the hearing. GAO counted 30 federal programs that can provide housing support targeted to Native American communities.
Eastern Band pursues land and housing
The committee took up tribal land at the same Sept. 23 meeting. Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Principal Chief Michell Hicks testified on H.R. 226, which would place about 76 acres in Monroe County, Tennessee, into trust for the tribe. The land includes the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum and the Tanasi and Chota memorials, and the House passed the bill in February 2025, according to a release from its sponsor, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn.
The Eastern Band descends from Cherokees who resisted removal, escaped the Trail of Tears or later returned to the Smoky Mountains, Hicks told the committee.
“The Eastern Band Cherokees found refuge in the State of North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains from forced removal, and we remain in a small portion of our original homelands,” he said.
The Eastern Band, based in western North Carolina, is a separate tribe from the Cherokee Nation, with its own federal recognition. In February, the Town of Franklin deeded the Noquisiyi Mound to the tribe, Asheville station WLOS reported. The mound was part of a Cherokee mother town.
The tribe’s land base, the Qualla Boundary, covers about 57,000 acres. A board of arbitrators found in 1874 that the land had been bought on behalf of the Cherokee people, and it was placed in trust, according to NCpedia, the State Library of North Carolina’s encyclopedia. Sales of land there are limited to tribal members, according to the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area.
The tribe has several housing projects in progress. HUD allocated it $4,746,585 in Indian Housing Block Grant funding for fiscal 2026, WLOS reported, citing agency documents. HUD announced more than $1.1 billion in grants for close to 600 tribal communities.
T.W. Saunooke, the tribe’s director of housing, told the tribal planning board on Sept. 21 that construction on Whitetree Court is set to begin in late October or early November, the Cherokee One Feather reported. The rental development in the Painttown community will set rents by income, the newspaper reported in May.
Saunooke told the board a general contractor is on site at Olivet, a development of 19 individual housing lots. A third project, Coopers Creek, has 13 individual units and 16 multifamily units in its first design phase, and its environmental assessment is with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Environmental review is one of the areas the Senate bill addresses. It would allow a single review to satisfy requirements when a project draws on more than one federal funding source, according to the council’s summary.
What comes next
The committee vote clears the bill for consideration by the full Senate, Tribal Business News reported.
A House companion, H.R. 8092, was introduced in March by Rep. Troy Downing, R-Mont., and Rep. Janelle Bynum, D-Ore. It remains in the House Financial Services Committee.
The council is urging lawmakers to pass both bills before the 119th Congress ends in January.
