$900,000 to help respond to the COVID-19 pandemic is going to the Pokagon Band of Pottawatomi from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD announced this week it’s giving out $17.8 million to tribes around the country through the Indian Community Development Block Grant Imminent Threat program. Four tribes in Michigan are receiving funds. They are the Pokagons, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa, and the Little River Band of Ottawa. HUD says the grants, each about $900,000 will be used for the construction of new rental housing to address overcrowding and homelessness, the building of transitional housing for quarantined individuals, and the rehabilitation of hotels for the isolation of tribal members affected by COVID. HUD Midwest Regional Administrator Joseph Galvan says tribes will be able to find “new strategies in the face of the pandemic to address the health and safety of their communities through these grants.”
