Shinnecock Nation gets $2M grant toward housing improvements

The Shinnecock Indian Nation has received a $2 million grant that will allow its Housing Department to make badly needed upgrades to 25 low-income homes on the Southampton reservation.

The grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York, a federally regulated private institution, is the largest received to date for the nation’s Housing Department, which oversees home repairs and upgrades for the Shinnecock Nation’s 230 on-reservation homes. The Affordable Housing Program grant is aimed chiefly at lower-income dwellings on the nation’s nearly 1,000-acre reservation.

The grant will allow the tribe to allocate from $60,000 to $80,000 per home for work that can include mold remediation, electrical panel and green-energy upgrades, roofing repairs, window replacements and other improvements to homes that are most in need, a Shinnecock official said.

"This is big for us," said Linee Matthews, project manager of the nation’s housing authority, which has a typical annual budget for home repairs of just over $30,000, excluding administrative costs. "Making sure our homes are healthy and safe is what we’ll use this grant for."

Program co-sponsor Dime Bank worked with the tribe to secure the grant.

Many Shinnecock homes are occupied by elders who badly need accessibility upgrades, conversions to lower-floor living spaces and bathrooms with safeguards for elder use. Many are on fixed incomes or otherwise financially challenged, and existing tribal programs weren't able to cover the bigger expenses the new program can, Matthews said.

A state grant and other programs have helped remediate up to 48 homes to help with flood mitigation and flood-damage prevention, but up to 200 have yet to be addressed for mold problems, Matthews said.

Planned electrical upgrades could ultimately lower costs, she added.

The nation’s plan, she said, is to convert as many homes as possible from fuel-oil and propane heating to electric heating and cooling through air-source heat pumps, with a longer-term ambition to supply solar energy across the nation. "The goal is to have everybody on solar for energy," Matthews said. "We want to have a system where no one has to pay an electric bill."

The tribe in 2024 received a donation of scores of solar panels from local installer SUNation. Some were installed on the Shinnecock preschool building, but the rest await funding and regulatory approvals for installation and connection to the grid. That work won’t be funded by the current grant.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of New York earmarks 10% of its private earnings each year to support the creation and preservation of low-income housing. The group reached out to the Shinnecock Nation and helped managers through the application process, Matthews said.

She credited another group with helping the nation with desperately needed home repairs and upgrades through the years. The Hamptons Community Outreach, a Bridgehampton-based nonprofit, funded and led the construction of 10 homes on the reservation, Matthews said, while helping pay for emergency home repairs, summer classes for children, hot meals and fresh vegetables, even helping fix or provide cars for tribe members.

"There’s never been a time they denied us when we asked, ‘Can you help?’ ” Matthews said of the group and its executive director, Marit Molin.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.