Enterprise Community Partners CI Report – Final

What has been most instrumenta to your progress?

Enterprise is most proud of achieving its stated goal of helping Native Homeownership Learning Communities Cohort (NHLCC) participants expand their organizational networks and build peer relationships. Participants repeatedly shared the power of connecting with others. Many homeownership practitioners in Native communities are very isolated, often serving as the only homeownership staff in their organization, or even their community. This isolation is compounded by the remote, rural location of many of these communities, a sense of isolation that was exacerbated by COVID-19. Given this, many participants recognized the value in coming together (virtually) with colleagues.

“Before the Enterprise meeting in January we didn’t even know what the other organizations were doing, we didn’t trust each other and didn’t even communicate, but now we are brainstorming together on policy development, funding opportunities, homelessness prevention, and establishing building codes. We are even putting together a website for our tribal members that will be a one stop shop for homeownership showcasing each organizations services and much more.” Lisa Schrader, Oglala Sioux Housing Authority.

Participants emphasized the value of peer learning offered by the cohort. Through the monthly cohort sessions and topical webinars, facilitators consistently worked to lift up the voices and experiences of participants. One participant shared, “I really liked when they switched over to having the experts in the cohort take over and share what they’ve worked through. Awesome to see people shine and share resources.”

Every organization that had the opportunity to work in a community team through the cohort shared that their partnerships were strengthened through the initiative. Community teams had the opportunity to come together to develop joint plans and common goals. Though many cohort members quickly pivoted to remote work during the pandemic, many of the monthly cohort session also provided the time for partners to meet through virtual breakout sessions. One participant noted, for example, “…we got to know them better, their particular needs and how we might help each other, that was definitely a great partnership.” Another participant said, “We recently reached out to Mazaska, and Lakota Funds has been huge in helping us. They are really coming through for us to fill gaps.

Collecting participant feedback on the NHLCC experience has been vital for Enterprise in evaluating the value of the pilot program and measuring impact goals. Enterprise conducted an in-person baseline survey of participants at the outset of the initiative, as well as follow-up surveys administered electronically at the mid-point and end of the program. The baseline and final surveys explored the impact of the NHLCC on participating organizations’ capacity to develop or enhance homeownership programs, while the mid-point survey focused primarily on peer-to-peer learning and cohort partnerships.

Overall, the evaluation indicated that the NHLCC program was successful in advancing tribal homeownership efforts among participating organizations and in meeting the program’s impact goals. At the completion of the program, 73 percent of respondents found the NHLCC to be “very useful” and 93 percent of respondents would recommend this program to other colleagues. The evaluation highlighted key program successes in areas such as Growth in Individual and Organizational Capacity, Connecting to a Network of Peers, Peer Learning and Development amongst others.

Key lessons learned

We adapted our format model based on participant feedback. After two monthly, three-hour virtual sessions, Enterprise shifted to providing two shorter cohort sessions each month. The first two-hour session provided opportunities for peer learning and connection, with time for community teams to meet, group discussions, and topic-specific breakout discussions.

The second, one-hour session covered presentations of homeownership-related content with primarily guest speakers. This second session was offered in a webinar format and was optional to cohort members depending on their interest in the topic and was also frequently open to non-cohort members. Some webinars built on topics in the Enhancing and Implementing curriculum, while others focused on additional topics suggested by participants, including preparing for a housing needs assessment in a pandemic and frameworks for holistic community development.

Again, flexibility based on participant needs was critical to success. Originally, Enterprise planned a twelve-month initiative that included in-person convenings at the beginning, middle, and end. During the pandemic, this shifted to a fully virtual program, and the duration was extended to May 2021. Cohort members met virtually each month through sessions that provided homeownership content, as well as opportunities for peer-sharing, community teamwork, and reflection. In addition, Enterprise added new discussion topics to address emerging issues that cohort members were facing, including foreclosure prevention. Each cohort organization received grant funding to support their homeownership efforts.

Reflections on the community innovation process

The collaborative elements of the Community Innovation model were most fundamental to our approach. Enterprise launched its Native Homeownership Learning Communities Cohort (NHLCC), an initiative focused on building the capacity of participating organizations to deliver homeownership programming by providing training, peer learning opportunities, creative space, and resources to enable participants to tackle obstacles and create more homeownership opportunities in their communities. The NHLCC was structured for the participants to participate as “community teams,” where multiple organizations from one tribe or region could collaborate on their homeownership programming goals, combining CDCs, TDHEs, and Native CDFIs.

A total of eighteen organizations participated in the cohort, coming from nine different tribal communities in seven states. Because of the focus on community teams and encouraging CDFI involvement, participating organizations reflected more diversity than typically seen in capacity-building programs, which are often limited to one type of organization (CDFI, TDHE, nonprofit) at one stage of growth (emerging or experienced organization).

Other key elements of Community Innovation

The following example from the NHLCC members/South Dakota Native Homeownership Coalition may fall within the “identifying need” component of the diagram, it could be accurately described as overcoming history.

“In our lifetime on our reservations, we are plagued by the fact that a lot of our homes were built with shoddy construction and as a result we have houses that don’t breathe properly. The prevalence of mold in our dwellings combined with the reliance on leaky wood stoves to heat a home creates poor air quality for our tribal members. Increased numbers of respiratory occurrences are linked to the air quality in Tribal homes. On Pine Ridge the life expectancy is second only to Haiti in the western hemisphere with men at just the age of 47.”

The groups in the cohort took the concerns of health and housing back the South Dakota Native Homeownership Coalition. The Sisseton Wahpeton Housing Authority has created a checklist for the work done in the specialty trades, plumbing, HVAC, and electrical. Any work moving forward will be done per code. This historical move is just the beginning for addressing this issue in health and housing for Tribal members in South Dakota.

Progress toward an innovation

One significant change was a transformational shift in perception and attitudes about homeownership in Native communities. Traditionally Native families have preferred living multigenerational, but that wasn’t efficient for many households during the Tribes mandatory “shelter in place” orders. In some cases, you had 20 plus people in a three-bedroom, one bath dwelling, making it almost impossible to follow the CDC safety guidelines. This, and the other realities of overcrowding, caused a lot of Tribal members to look into purchasing their own home.

On one call during a Tribal shutdown, Colleen Steele of Mazaska Financial in Pine Ridge said “The doors to Mazaska might be closed but we’re still closing loans”. In 2020-2021, 279 people expressed interest in homeownership, 254 applied to Mazaska for credit repair, classes, etc and 26 households got mortgages.

Tribal members in South Dakota are seeing the benefits of homeownership in a different light due to the pandemic. Due to the cohort, our Coalition members, especially the Pine Ridge group, are already poised to guide any applicant through the home buying process to make their dream a reality.

What it will take to reach an innovation?

Participant feedback through surveys and exit interviews confirmed that through the Native Homeownership Learning Communities Cohort, Enterprise Community Partners successfully achieved its goal of building the personal and organizational capacity to deliver homeownership programming to community members. Participants saw tremendous value in coming together (even virtually) over an extended period to learn from one another, address common challenges, combat isolation, and dive more deeply into the essential components of homeownership. Undoubtedly, this increased capacity will, in turn, lead to more Native families successfully achieving homeownership in the communities touched by this initiative. Moving forward, participants were unanimous in their feedback that Enterprise should build on this pilot, to offer similar cohort learning opportunities to additional Native organizations in the future.

What’s next?

In 2022 we will be refining the cohort model, building out our internal roles and responsibilities for delivering the cohort, put out a call for participants, start raising funds and prepare to launch the cohort again in 2023.

If you could do it all over again…

Based on our experience, there are several changes we would make to our training delivery.

Cohort size – With eighteen organizations from nine tribal communities, at times it seemed like there were too many organizations. Both facilitators and participants suggested looking at reducing the number of organizations, which would provide more time for deeper discussions.

Emphasize workshops – Future cohort design could include workshopping as a mandatory part of participation.

Programming geared to different stages of organizational or staff development – While participants acknowledged the benefits of working with organizations and peers who were more experienced and the value of the diversity of cohort members, they also noted how diversity also resulted in content being too basic for mature organizations at times. Facilitators noted this trend as well. Some participants suggested providing the opportunity to explore more advanced content, including taking a deeper look a foreclosure prevention, forming homeowner associations on trust land, loss mitigation strategies, and preparing to work with the secondary market.

One last thought

We would like to note that while there are technically unspent funds – those funds have been committed to Lakota Funds and they will be drawing those funds down. Lakota funds utilized an additional $30,000 (aside from the grants provided to cohort participants) to support their construction internship stipends and to develop their sharing the model toolkit to support other states or regions that are interested in starting a Native Homeownership Coalition.