On the Walker River Paiute Tribe reservation, tribal officials and community members plant their shovels to break ground on the highly anticipated water looping system. A project that will allow the tribe to build more housing and add more economic development to the 325,000-acre reservation.
The water project was a decade in the making and in high demand as tribal members have been wanting to live on the reservations. With no available housing, they can't.
Genia Williams returned home to the reservation a decade ago to become the housing director for the Walker River Paiute Tribe, aiming to develop the tribe; instead, she encountered unavoidable infrastructure issues.
"The impacts of not being able to build homes, when you think you're going to come back as a housing director, you're thinking 'ok, you can build homes and do things' and find out that that was not going to happen, there had to be a moratorium," Williams said.
Getting funding to build infrastructure on a reservation is not easy.
It wasn't until 2024 that the federal government approved a $20 million grant for the Walker River Paiute tribe to fund the water looping system, a community building, jobs, and supply their food pantry. The Trump Administration has since clawed back that money, and, as a result, the housing project was nearly scrapped.
The reservation is remote. The nearest municipality is over 34 miles away in both directions, which limits economic opportunities. The tribe primarily generates its funding from land leases, a gas station and a cannabis dispensary.
Walker River Paiute Tribe Chairwoman Melanie McFalls knew that although the tribe is trying to save funds, securing the water looping funding would be worth the investment for generations to come.
"You know, it was kinda hard to just give up 3 million just like that, but we had to or else we would've lost the entire project," McFalls said.
By the end of the project, the tribe will add 35 more homes to the reservation and provide economic opportunities.
Forty miles north of the Walker River Paiute Tribe is the city of Fallon, which is also home to the Fallon Shoshone-Paiute Tribe — a community with 8,200 acres of land within the city limits.
In Fallon, over 60% of the households make $50,000 a year or less, according to UNR's Extension. Even with an income of $75,000, home buyers are limited to roughly $ 220,000 of buying power.
Currently, only a third of all houses in Fallon are valued at around $200,000. As of late September, there were only three houses for sale on Redfin in that price range.
The lack of housing is impacting not only the state but also the reservations. Fallon Shoshone-Paiute Tribe's housing program development manager, Russell Dyer-Redner, has seen how difficult getting housing can be.
"From my own personal experiences, you didn't have an opportunity to have housing," Dyer-Redner said. "It was either that or put in an application at housing, and you'd be basically on a waiting list, and it seems like you're basically waiting for someone to die or something to even have a chance at housing."
When Dyer-Redner wanted to come back home to the reservation, he was told the same thing as many others: there's no housing available. The other way to live on a reservation is to purchase a home, an option not available to all tribal members due to income restrictions.
"We've done really well at providing jobs, and we always have a lot of job openings all the time," Williams said. "Being able to have people to come in and fill in those job opportunities would be wonderful."
To combat the lack of housing, the tribe is building a 22-unit housing project. Construction workers were on the site of the first housing development on the reservation in 20 years. Part of the funding for the project came from the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit.
The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California are also planning similar housing projects.
The lack of housing has even impacted hiring, according to Williams.
These projects are adding housing to the reservation, but in small numbers, with the help of federal funding. Yet there are thousands of members waiting their turn to be next in the housing waitlist.
These federal funds come out of a big pot of money where all 574 federal tribes nationwide are applying for a piece. And every year the pot keeps shrinking.
Federal appropriations, such as the Indian Housing Block Grant, have declined for decades because the funds are not keeping up with inflation and population growth, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities from this year.
"There's always going to be a shortage, but if we can meet a majority of our needs, then we'll you know do our do diligence, and hopefully people will be able to come back," Williams said.
And that's what tribal leaders from tribes across the state want: to bring their members back home.
