With keys in hand and a team of coworkers and friends carrying belongings behind her, Carma Brown stepped inside her new home.
It’s the first she’s ever owned.
After about six years on a waitlist for lease-to-own housing, her turn had come. Over the 30-year agreement, she’ll pay $600 a month, including taxes and home insurance. This allows Brown to keep her current job — and not have to work extra hours or get a second job — to afford her home.
“I’ve been wanting my own home my entire life,” Brown, 60, said. “To know this is mine now, I’m just in disbelief.”
Brown is part of a wave of new homeowners on the Cherokee Nation reservation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, which has for years increased its investments in housing for its citizens. Since the Cherokee Nation passed the Housing, Jobs and Sustainable Communities Act in 2019, and with a $120 million boost in 2022, the tribe has built more than 360 homes and rehabbed more than 900 others.
The latest permanent expansion of the housing law signed Sept. 27 allows the Cherokee Nation to dedicate $40 million to housing development and improvements every three years in perpetuity. Some of it will build new units. Some will go to programs like the one that helped Brown get her own home. About $6 million of those funds will be set aside for expanding community centers across the reservation.
Moments before signing the extension, Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said the legislation “is going to make a big difference in the lives of Cherokee people now and into the future.”