In the first-of-its-kind summit, tribal, political and business leaders looked to shift away from past housing barriers and towards opportunity.
The National Tribal Housing Ecosystem Summit, hosted by national nonprofit Enterprise Community Patterns, was held for the first time in Boise from Tuesday through Thursday. The summit put particular focus on projecting a sense of optimism about the future of Native housing.
“We’ve spent the last 20 years talking about the challenges and barriers, and it’s time to shift the narrative and talk about the opportunities and successes,” Tonya Plummer, Enterprise’s director of Native American housing programs, said. “We have a lot of tribes who have really begun to develop mature and robust systems.”
The No. 1 goal of the summit was to forward the idea that there is a need to build “strong tribal housing ecosystems,” that recognize the various ways that stable housing situations intersect with other areas of life, Plummer said.
That focus was underlined in the summit’s policy session.