New Homes Arrive for Poverty-Stricken Pine Ridge Reservation
Story-Date: 06:47 p.m. PST Sunday   , July 20, 1997

New Homes Arrive for Poverty-Stricken Pine Ridge ReservationIndian Country
Today, Rapid City, S.D.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News

WANBLEE, S.D.--Jul. 21--Johanna Dubray and Virginia Shangreaux watched as
their new homes arrived on trucks and were unloaded onto their foundations.

For the first time ever the Dubray and Shangreaux families now have a
decent and affordable place to call home.

Due to the work of Operation Walking Shield, and a $100,000 grant from the
Fannie Mae Foundation, more than 461 other American Indian families soon
will see that dream come true.

Operation Walking Shield last week delivered the first round of homes, six
family housing units, as part of an ambitious plan to transport 88 of 463
fully re-conditioned, winterized homes more than 500 miles from North
Dakota to Wanblee on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Each 1,200 square-foot house has two bathrooms, double-paned windows,
siding, and a new roof.

Operation Walking Shield is one of the largest housing recycling programs
ever undertaken in the United States.

Led by the California-based nonprofit Walking Shield American Indian
Society, this effort will help relieve the severe shortage of housing on
reservations by recycling vacant homes.

``We have come together to offer hope to those who live without the basic
necessities in life that most of us take for granted,'' said Phil Stevens,
president of Walking Shield.

``Thousands of children and their parents are homeless, while tens of
thousands more live in deplorable, substandard housing comparable to living
conditions in many Third World countries,'' he said.

The Pine Ridge Reservation is one of the poorest in the country. Of its
25,000 residents, nearly 29 percent are homeless, 84 percent are
unemployed, 59 percent have substandard housing, and 21 percent are without
indoor plumbing.

``Families that have never had decent housing will now have a decent place
to live. Children for whom a house was only a dream will now have a place
to call home,'' said Glen Howard, general council for the Fannie Mae
Foundation.

``This is truly an innovative project, providing people with places to
live, by recycling homes.

This collaborative effort will help improve the quality of life on our
nation's American Indian reservations by providing decent, safe and
sanitary housing in which people can live and raise their children,'' he
said.

Operation Walking Shield is a joint effort with the Air Force Air Mobility
Command, U.S. Air Force Reserve, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development, U.S. Department of Interior, and Air Force Reserve and Marine
Corps Engineer personnel.

-----

ON THE INTERNET:

Visit Indian Country Today on the World Wide Web at
http://www.indiancountry.com/

-----



(c) 1997, Indian Country Today, Rapid City, S.D. Distributed by
Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News.



------------------------------------------------------------