After three days at the National American Indian Housing Council's 52nd Annual Convention in Anchorage, I kept coming back to one uncomfortable observation: there is a sophisticated housing policy infrastructure for Indian Country, but missing is the communication infrastructure to make it work at the household level.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act. Three decades of tribal housing authorities exercising sovereignty over housing decisions. Thirty years of block grants, loan guarantees, and community-driven solutions.
The legislation works. The funding mechanisms are in place. The convention's sessions on Section 184 loans, LIHTC partnerships, and Title VI financing demonstrated the sophisticated tools available to tribal housing authorities.
Yet the question that kept surfacing—in sessions on advocacy, in discussions about homeownership access, in conversations about veteran services—wasn't about whether the programs exist. It was about whether the people who need them know they exist.
Recent data from the Federal Communications Commission shows that approximately 24% of Americans living on tribal lands lack broadband access, in contrast to about 7% of Americans broadly. A March 2026 Urban Institute report highlighted the continued need for broadband across Native communities and found that FCC data may actually overstate access, meaning the real gap could be even wider.
Those aren't just statistics about technology access. They're statistics about whether tribal housing authorities can reliably reach the families they serve.
When we ask housing authorities to communicate through digital channels—websites, email, social media—we're asking them to use infrastructure that doesn't reach nearly a quarter of the people on tribal lands.
The convention's theme, "Strengthening Tribal Housing Through Resilience & Self-Determination", raises a critical question: Can there be real self-determination when the infrastructure for information flow is this fragmented?
Self-determination means tribes make their own decisions about housing priorities. But it also has to mean that tribal members can access the full range of housing options available to them. That elders know about weatherization programs. That veterans understand their HUD-VASH eligibility. That young families can navigate the path to homeownership.
Self-determination at the policy level needs to translate to self-determination at the household level. And that translation happens through communication.
When we treat communication as an afterthought—something to figure out after the program is designed, secured the funding, and navigated the compliance requirements—self-determination is being undermined. As Dr. Traci L. Morris, director of the Center for Tribal Digital Sovereignty at Arizona State University, noted in February 2026 when discussing the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on tribal communities: "It's not an exaggeration to say that we died. It's not an exaggeration to say that we were the canaries in the coal mine."
The pandemic exposed what happens when communication infrastructure fails in tribal communities. Research showed that a 1% increase in broadband access nationwide lowered Covid-19 mortality by about 19 deaths per 100,000 - but tribal communities suffered disproportionately from being denied reliable internet connections.
The convention's sessions on trauma-informed design, cross-sector collaboration with family services and health programs, and climate resiliency all pointed to something important: housing doesn't exist in isolation. The most innovative tribal housing work happening right now is integrating housing with healthcare, workforce development, family services, and education.
But if housing authorities struggle to communicate about housing programs using fragmented channels, how do we coordinate across sectors when each program has its own communication approach? The communication infrastructure problem in housing is a preview of the communication infrastructure problem in integrated tribal services.
If communication is truly treated as infrastructure rather than an afterthought, what would that actually require?
It would mean tribal housing authorities need sovereignty over their communication channels - tools they control, that carry their brand and authority, that don't depend on algorithms or platforms that can change overnight. It would mean designing for actual connectivity constraints, not assuming urban solutions work where 24% of residents lack high-speed internet access. And it would mean building systems that support cross-sector coordination rather than creating new silos, with the same rigor we apply to measuring housing units and loan volumes.
These aren't features to shop for. They're requirements for infrastructure that supports tribal sovereignty.
The tribal housing advocacy community is sophisticated about advocating for funding, for regulatory flexibility, for program improvements. But I wonder if we need to start advocating just as hard for communication equity.
When funding comes with complex compliance requirements, when programs have narrow application windows, when opportunities require documentation that many families don't know how to navigate—and then we layer on communication systems that don't reliably reach people—the system being created is a system that selects for families who already have access to information networks.
That's not equity. And it's undermining the policy wins that advocates are fighting for.
Full transparency: I was in Anchorage representing Patter, and we've just evolved from Homes4Good into Patter COMPASS specifically to address communication infrastructure for CBOs, nonprofits, and housing organizations. So I have a professional stake in this problem.
But I'm writing this not because I think we have the answer, but because I think the tribal housing sector needs to be asking the question more urgently.
The solutions may come from purpose-built platforms. They may come from better use of existing tools. They may come from tribal-led innovations I haven't imagined. What I do know is that the convention reinforced something important: communication can’t be treated as an afterthought in tribal housing and expect self-determination to work at the household level.
The convention covered financing mechanisms, construction innovations, and partnership models. All critical topics. But I hope the tribal housing sector will also start having a more explicit conversation about communication as strategic infrastructure. About what it means to exercise sovereignty over information flow. About how we measure whether programs are reaching the people they're designed to serve.
Because 30 years into NAHASDA, tribal housing authorities have proven they can manage complex programs, develop innovative solutions, and exercise self-determination in housing policy. The infrastructure that's missing isn't physical, it's the system that connects policy to practice.
And right now, nearly a quarter of people on tribal lands can't access the programs that are being built for them - not because the programs don't exist, but because the information doesn't reach them.