The Nez Perce Tribal Housing Authority (NPTHA) was organized pursuant to Nez Perce Tribe Executive Committee Ordinance adopted in 1961.
Over the past 10 years, the NPTHA has been implementing mortgage based housing programs. Through this effort, we have developed comprehensive homeownership training courses, as well as, Renter’s Rights & Responsibility courses. In 2007, we issued 49 Homebuyer Education Certificates, 21 Renter’s Certificates and also provided our Credit Class to 90 highschool students. In addition, we have provided down payment and closing costs assistance to three more families in 2007. This brings a total of 36 low and moderate income families that have completed the mortgage process since the year 2000 with assistance from our program. These numbers do not include the over-moderate income families that have utilized the Section 184 loan program to obtain their own mortgage.
The NPTHA has provided various maintenance, decorating and home repair classes to assist our families. Since there is a wide variety of interests, we have established resource libraries in both our Lapwai and Kamiah offices. These libraries include How-to books, various magazines, videos, financial tutorials and laptop workstations. We welcome any tribal member to visit our libraries.
The key responsibilities of our Board of Commissioners is to support the NPTHA mission of creating opportunities to meet the housing needs of our tribal members. Some of our activities conducted over the past year include:
►12 regular monthly meetings
►Revised three policies: the NPTHA Human Resource Manual, the IDA policy and our Board By-laws.
►Attended various housing workshops such as, the Northwest Indian Housing Association quarterly meetings, NAIHC Annual Convention, NAIHC Legal Symposium; quarterly meetings with NPTEC and in-house board training and policy reviews.
►Conducted 4 appeal hearings or heard appeal statements.
►Reviewed and approved annual audit; Indian Housing Plan and Annual Performance Report.
►Just recently we assisted our NPTEC in updating and revising the Housing Ordinance.