Trigger warning: This column contains politically incorrect observations.

The catalyst is the scandal at the Navajo Housing Authority. Although the real scandal is that the nominal scandal is wholly unsurprising.

An investigation by The Arizona Republic found that NHA has received tons of money from the federal government and built very few houses. A follow-up investigation by the staff of U.S. Sen. John McCain confirmed the findings.

According to the McCain report, over the last decade NHA received over $800 million from the federal government, but built only 1,110 homes. That’s over $700,000 a home.

NHA says that it needs $9 billion to build 34,000 new homes on the reservation. That’s $265,000 a home, more than the median home value in the Phoenix metro area.

There's a much larger problem here

Undoubtedly, there has been mismanagement, incompetence or worse at NHA. Heads have rolled. There’s a new chief executive and a new board in the process of being appointed.

But the problems on our Native American reservations, in housing and well beyond housing, aren’t simply an issue of competent management. They inhere in the structure of the reservations and their relationship with the federal government.

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It’s worth noting that the federal government got out of the business of building low-income housing off the reservation in 1974, opting instead to provide the poor with vouchers to subsidize rents in privately-owned housing. Today, three times as many people receive rent subsidies for private housing as live in government built and owned structures.

That model cannot be easily transferred to the reservations because of their collectivist natures. The tribal government, as a general proposition, owns and controls everything. That’s not a structure that can attract private investment.

And tribal governments exhibit the bureaucratic paralysis of all collectivist enterprises.

Business is good. Living standards aren't

NHA, beyond whatever mismanagement might have existed, faced real obstacles to assembling land for new housing projects. Even on the relatively small portion of the reservation in which property was privately and individually owned, a Government Accountability Office report found that it took up to five years to gain permission to build. Nearly 10 separate departments had to approve.

The Navajo Nation is spread out over a remote, rural area. Development is going to be difficult, irrespective of how much money is appropriated or how it is managed. Rural areas off the reservation are also struggling, as urbanization continues across the country.

But the lot of individual Native Americans living on the reservation is distressing, even among relatively successful tribes in urban areas.

The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community here in the Valley is pursuing a form of state capitalism. The tribe owns casinos, resorts, golf courses, shopping centers, a landfill. They appear to be relatively successful.

Yet this has only modestly improved the living standards of those living on the reservation. Poverty and unemployment remain elevated. Those with jobs mostly work for the tribal government. Tribal state capitalism hasn’t offered individual Native Americans a path to self-sufficiency and advancement.

Culture of dependency only hurts tribes

Naomi Schaefer Riley, in her recent book “The New Trail of Tears,” gets at the larger issues.

The plight of Native Americans living on reservations is viewed almost exclusively through the lens of the past. Native Americans were forcibly evicted from their lands and devastated by European diseases against which they had no immunities. American governments repeatedly violated treaties and broke promises made with them. Native Americans are owed a historical debt.

The nature of tribal governments and their relationship with the federal government are structured to pay this historical debt. The federal government is trustee for the reservations. Tribal governments look primarily to the federal government for resources for such elementary things as housing. And Native Americans on the reservations look to their tribal governments to provide those things for them.

As Riley points out, what really holds back Native American advancement today is the culture of paternalism and dependency that was created to pay the historical debt. What is needed today are fundamental reforms that offer individual Native Americans living on reservations a path to self-sufficiency and advancement.

Reforms that look primarily to the future, not the past.

Reach Robb at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com.

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