On the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, finding enough affordable housing for all the Lakota people who need it is a constant challenge. But a new tiny home project spearheaded by a local Y.M.C.A. branch aims to serve as one possible model for addressing the crisis.
“My tribe is the fourth-largest land-based tribe in the nation, and we have a huge housing deficit,” said Alli Moran, who is the intergovernmental affairs officer for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, a board member at the Y.M.C.A. branch and a founder of Sovereignty First, a consulting firm. The Cheyenne River Housing Authority’s waiting list for low-income housing has more than 700 people on it, Ms. Moran said.
As people fail to find places of their own, many of them crowd together with family members in homes that were never designed to support so many people.
“The housing size is 10 to 15 people in some of these two-bedroom or three-bedroom homes,” said Andrew Corley, the chief executive of the local Y.M.C.A. branch, Seven Council Fires, in Dupree, S.D. “You’ve got multigenerational houses, with people sleeping on couches and people sleeping on cots.”
Hoping to develop an initiative that could relieve some of the pressure, the Y.M.C.A. of the Seven Council Fires partnered with Y.M.C.A. alumni from across the country to build high-quality, energy-efficient houses that people would feel proud to call home.
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The post Tiny Homes Aim to Address Shortage on Lakota Reservation appeared first on New York Times.
