FORT RILEY, Kan. -- It seems Fort Riley's excess housing is just what the Kickapoo Nation needs.
Ten homes from the post's Warner-Peterson housing area will be transported to the Kickapoo Nation reservation, north of Topeka, Kansas, to help alleviate a need for three and four-bedroom houses there under Operation Walking Shield named after a California-based organization that coordinates support programs for Native American communities nationwide.
The occasion was marked with a ceremony May 23 in the Warner-Peterson housing area, during which time documents were signed that established a partnership between personnel of the 1st Infantry Division, Corvias Military Living, Fort Riley and the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas.
Among those in attendance were Brig. Gen. Patrick D. Frank, 1st Inf. Div. and Fort Riley acting senior commander; Col. John D. Lawrence, Fort Riley garrison commander; James Champagne, Corvias Housing business director; Steve Milton, Fort Riley garrison housing manager; Lester Randall, chairman of the Kickapoo Tribal Council; Peggy Houston, executive director of the Kickapoo Housing Authority, and a number of community leaders from the region.
"We're totally excited about this because we get to work with Fort Riley and Operation Walking Shield," Randall said. "What this does for us is it gives our reservation members living in multi-family households an opportunity to have their own home, whether it's rented or owned, and that will help -- economically help the tribe and allow members to move back to the reservation."
The buildings were originally slated for demolition according to information provided during ceremony planning, will increase the number of homes the Kickapoo Nation manages to 76, Randall said.
The effort was facilitated by Marvin Thurman, executive director of OWS, whose role, according to Houston, is to communicate the availability of homes to Native American tribes from the Armed Services.
Thurman informed Bernadette Thomas, the Kickapoo Housing Authority Tribal Council liaison, of the availability of the houses and coordinated the initial discussions with Fort Riley to start the process, Houston said.
Funding for the transfer comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Houston said.
The Kickapoo Housing Authority is a tribally designated housing entity and receives from HUD an Indian Housing Block Grant under the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act.
According to HUD archives, housing staffs in United States Air Force bases in North Dakota and Montana have worked with OWS and transferred houses in similar fashion. Fort Riley became the first active-duty Army post to provide such support to a Native-American community.
Leaders from both the 1st Inf. Div., Fort Riley and the Kickapoo Nation hope more such support is forthcoming in the future, Frank and Houston said. This effort has proven that, once approved, and as Frank noticed, moving a house isn't that difficult.
"As we talked to the garrison leadership here today, they discussed how relatively easy it was for the team to come here and place this house on the apparatus to move it," Frank said. "So, potentially we'll have the chance to grow this program and continue to assist the tribe greater than what we originally expected."
That should come as good news for Houston.
"We still need a lot more houses," she said. "This is a good start. I started there in October of 2015 and during this entire time there's been at least 10 people on a waiting list for three and four bedroom houses. We have multi-generational families in a given house and it's not out of the ordinary to have at least three grandchildren in the home with the grandmother and the parents right there. So we're trying to help them become independent and self-sufficient."
According to Houston, HUD defines people who are staying with other people as homeless, regardless of whether they are with relatives or not. She added there are about 20 families on the Kickapoo Housing Authority's wait list, of which 10 are in need of three or four-bedroom houses, a number that has not gone down during Houston's tenure with the Authority.
"That waiting list from when I started in October 2015 has not went down because we've not had three or four-bedroom houses," Houston said.
According to Champagne, there will be plenty of houses at Fort Riley available to the Kickapoo Nation, should they ask for them. As of now, 253 homes are in the process of demolition and the Department of the Army has approved an additional 335 excess homes, he said.
"So as long as there is a need in the Kickapoo Tribe we're going to accommodate them so they can take the homes," Champagne said.
According to Milton, plans are for two more houses to be transported in mid-June and six more sometime in October or November.
Frank expressed his personal satisfaction and pride for the development of the partnership.
"Just talking to the leadership of the Kickapoo Tribe and how much they appreciate Fort Riley and the 1st Inf. Div. contributing these homes to their tribe," Frank said. "And I think that is in alignment with Army values, it's in alignment with the values of our Kansas natives in the Flint Hills and it shows exactly what the 1st Inf. Div. has done over its 100 years, and that's to continue to live our Army values. So we're very proud of what occurred here today, and look forward to seeing this partnership continue to grow with the Kickapoo Tribe."
Champagne said building these relationships is a key to the future of the region.
"This is a great way to show our partnership within the region and now we've actually stretched that partnership as far as Topeka so we're bringing in the Kickapoo tribe into our community now," he said. "We've made that relationship; we've made that connection. So we're really looking forward to the future and furthering our partnership with them."
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