FAYETTEVILLE—A 29-year-old doctoral student is planning to buy a home in Northwest Arkansas soon, but as she walks down the street in her high heels, no one around her knows. No one knows how monumental this milestone is for her and her family, she said, having been raised by an impoverished Native American family attempting to overcome the still-prevalent issues resulting from displacement 100 years ago.

“That’s a big deal because I’m 29 years old, and I have collateral, and nobody else in my family has anything like that,” said Christina Woods, a member of the Cherokee Nation, who is looking to buy a home for around $130,000.

If Woods succeeds in buying a home, she would be an anomaly amongst Native Americans in Northwest Arkansas, which make up about 1 percent of the population, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Nationally, one in four Native Americans are living in poverty, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center study.

Native Americans have the highest home mortgage loan denial rate of any race or ethnicity in the Northwest Arkansas region at almost 31 percent – 10 percent higher than the next highest racial group – African Americans, according to 2014 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act loan records.

While many sources, in discussing the denial rates of different minority groups, thought racism could be an elementthe analysis of mortgage lending data reported to federal banking regulators does not show conclusive evidence of this and points more so to – along with people’s personal testimonies – financial and educational problems.

The analysis was conducted by students at the Walter J. Lemke Department of Journalism at the University of Arkansas. It also found that Native Americans also have the lowest median family income, at $31,041, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Graphic by Quincy Ward

D’Andre Jones, president of the Northwest Arkansas Democratic caucus chairman of the Fayetteville Civil Rights Commission, said African Americans may experience more difficulty in buying a home because of a lack of generational wealth.

“We end up obtaining wealth or making money but since it’s somewhat a novice to us we don’t learn the value of maintaining good credit and learning all of the procedures as it relates to buying a home,” Jones said.

Family Struggles

The generational transfer of wealth, which depends on both cultural norms and individual family finances, seems to have a clear impact on home buying, according to interviews with home buyers and mortgage lending experts.

Joanna Donohoe, a partner at Seven Sisters Community Development Group, LLC, a firm that helps low-wealth and minority communities navigate the housing market through training and organization of advocacy groups, has researched home-buying issues and worked with Native American groups on and off reservations. When considering the circumstances of Native Americans off tribal land, she said the high denial rate could be caused by a combination of financial and cultural factors that can lead to mismanagement of funds and poor or no credit.

“Where a young family in mainstream America may go to college, get married, buy their own home and start building their credit, young Native American people don’t have those same opportunities,” she said. “They may stay home to help take care of elders. They may not have as many opportunities because of education issues. A lot of them may be economically related, but could be cultural as well, and historical.”

The most common reason for home loan application denials was credit history, according to HMDA data. Woods agreed with the findings.

“It absolutely makes sense – we are a group of people that was displaced over 100 years ago,” Woods said. “If you drive through Oklahoma where everybody’s family lives, people still live in poverty.”  

Only 13 percent of Native Americans and Alaska Natives – a grouping established by government statisticians – hold a bachelor’s degree or higher compared to the 28 percent for the general population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006–2010 American Community Survey. Woods is part of the 4 percent earning higher than a bachelor’s; she is a doctoral student and an academic adviser in the Agriculture Food and Life Sciences department at the University of Arkansas. Academically and economically, Woods has advanced but she is not far from home.

She grew up in Gentry, about 45 minutes outside of Fayetteville and near the Oklahoma-Arkansas border. Her Cherokee heritage can be traced back to northern Georgia, where her ancestors lived almost a century ago, before they were displaced by Andrew Jackson’s administration.

“We had a farm, we grew crops, we had homes, we had taverns,” Woods said. “There’s nothing once we get to Indian Territory; nobody has anything. We lost our land to taxes, because we couldn’t afford to pay the taxes.”

Christina Woods shows off a hand-embroidered Cherokee alphabet in her office on the University of Arkansas campus Dec. 1.

Woods met with a realtor a few weeks ago, but said she realized that with her salary, she would need to buy a USDA Rural Development Guaranteed Housing loan, more commonly known as a USDA loan. Both tribal and federal programs assist Native Americans with home purchases, but none living in Arkansas qualify because there are no federally recognized tribal or trust lands in the state.

On trust land, Native Americans can also struggle with buying a home, which can be difficult because “collateral is a little more complicated,” Donohoe said. On top of that, it requires boutique loans, which are loans that come from smaller, specialized firms. For banks like Wells Fargo or Bank of America, they don’t do these types of designer loans anymore, she said.

“So, in many cases, you will see lower rates of home ownership because of the land status, ” Donohoe said.

While those living off reservations may find it easier – at least less complicated – to use their land as collateral for their home, people like Woods would also not be receiving the same kind of federal and tribe-based assistance they would be receiving on the reservation.

“You’re kind of in a catch-22, because a lot of the programs that do outreach to those folks – who would usually help a first-time homebuyer or someone in a low-income area – they may not target Native people because there is this assumption that a tribe is taking care of them,” Donohoe said.

“But in many cases the tribe says, ‘Well you’re not on the reservation. We’re not serving urban tribal members.’ So in some cases, those folks fall through the cracks.”

Woods’ family has very little earning power, she said. Her mother was once homeless. She now  lives in the first permanent home anyone in her family has had since Native American removal. Woods owns about three acres of land that once belonged to her father. Although the land tract is small, Woods said, she’ll use it as collateral when she buys her first home.

“But most of the Native American population around here, that is going to own land, it is going to be one county over into Oklahoma. It is not going to be in Arkansas,” said Stacy Leeds, University of Arkansas School of Law dean and member of the Cherokee Nation.

Wood’s family struggles is also reflected in the state and national data. In Arkansas, the Native American home loan rejection rate was at about 35 percent, following below only the African American rate of 38 percent, according to the 2015 HMDA data. Nationally, Native Americans still rank first at an almost 23 percent rejection rate. This is more than double the rejection rate of Asians and whites nationally, who both fall around 11 percent.  

Other Group’s Experiences

In contrast to the Native American population, those of Asian descent in Northwest Arkansas hold the lowest home mortgage loan denial rate of anyone – including whites – at less than 10 percent, according to the analysis of HMDA data. Asians also have the have the highest income in the area, with a median household income of $82,037 in 2015, and are by far the most likely to hold a college degree nationally: 50 percent hold a bachelor’s degree or higher and of those, 40 percent have a graduate or professional degree, according to the U.S. Census Bureau survey.

Graphic by Quincy Ward

Mohammed Khaja, who now works as a research engineer at Silicon Solar Solutions, moved to Fayetteville from Hyderabad, India about 10 years ago to earn his master’s in electrical engineering at the University of Arkansas. His wife, Shaik Tahareem, moved to Fayetteville one year ago, and Mohammed thought it was time to look for a house, he said. His father, who still lives in India, was the first to suggest buying a home.

“He instigated all the ideas to me,” he said. “… He was ready to send the money for me to cover the down payment as well. So, he is very supportive I would say. Usually, I would say that is the same case in all of India: the parents will support the child to buy a house.”

Eunjoo Cho, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas from South Korea, moved to Northwest Arkansas with her family of four in 2013. She and her husband, who works in accounting, are considering buying a home in the area when the time is right, she said.

She said she thinks most Asian people she knows do not have trouble buying a home because they work at the university or are business owners.

Following Native Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders have the second-highest mortgage loan rejection rates at about 28 percent, according to HMDA data.

Policarpio and Gertrude Navarro bought their home in 1999 after moving their small family from the Marshall Islands to Hawaii and then to Springdale in search of the right doctor to treat their oldest daughter’s heart murmur.

The two saved up money in the islands before moving to the United States, and both said Marshallese people who have more children might encounter more problems making their down payments.

“They can’t afford the house,” Policarpio Navarro said. “They just stay in the apartment we’re in right now, apartment is, you know, the rate of living in an apartment right now is getting to be very expensive for them.”

The Navarros have 13 years left to make payments on the house, which they bought for $104,000. They refinanced the loan through Bank of America to get an interest rate of about 3 percent, down from their original interest rate of 7.8 percent.

Although Woods is still researching ways to pay for her new home, she is looking forward to establishing her own family home with her husband.

“I want it to look cute and homey, that’s important to me,” Woods said. “I want to buy a house that I can stay in for a long time.”

Story by Ashton Eley and Ginny Monk
Graphics by Quincy Ward
Background research and collection by Taylor Pray and Haleigh Ball
Edited by Julia Trupp