Talk:Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996

Untitled
This page is also being included in a project for a class in Housing and Social Policy at the University of Washington. We just added some edits today, but are still in the process of refining them. Thank you for your patience as we improve the quality of our additions. Wkspeer (talk) 23:39, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Katie's Edits
This is a really interesting topic. You've done a great job of coming up with data on the program (like number of units constructed.) I've noticed some grammatical errors and areas where I'm not sure what it is you're trying to say. I didn't feel comfortable changing them on the article, so they are listed below.

Is there any way you can provide some more information on the reasons for the act? Like, were the housing conditions really poor before the act was implemented? You say that the conditions of infrastructure was unsatisfactory. What does unsatisfactory mean?

Your introduction starts with: "The Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996 was passed to simplify..." Can you put the acronym in this sentence? You refer to NAHASDA multiple times, but never indicate what it is an acronym for.
 * Introduction

I do like the explanation here, but as I mentioned before, can you elaborate on the dire infrastructure need? Was there a lack of housing? Was there a need for rehabilitation? What was the scope of the problem?


 * History

"The memorandum was the basis for NAHASDA, as the new power of Housing and Urban Development in Indian affairs necessetated the creation of Grant and Support Programs specifically for the use of American Indian and Alaska Native groups who previously used the broad-based and varied programs created by the United States Housing Act. NAHASDA consolidated the programs previously available to tribal groups into the Indian Housing Block Grant (IHBG), and also authorized Title IV loan programs for use by American Indian tribes." (For this paragraph (and the whole article) make sure to be consistent with your acronyms ( for example you write out Housing and Urban Development here and use "HUD" elsewhere) and also make sure you use correct punctuation as far as capitalization is concerned (i.e. does Grant and Support Programs need to be capitalized?)

"...District Court ruled in favor of the OHA, claiming that the authorization of grants to the OHA did not constitute any harm to the plaintiffs, setting a president for the constitutionality of supplying funds to Native groups for them to use as they see fit." Do you mean "setting a precedent"?

"... promoting private capital markets Indian Country 'to allow such markets to operate and grow, thereby benefiting Indian communities*NAHASDA Actual Legislation.'" This sentence does not make sense, I am not sure what you are trying to say here.
 * Summary

"Yearly reports must be submitted by the tribes along with the government’s review." What does this mean? Who is the report submitted to and what government is reviewing? The tribal government?

"If a recipient fails to meet the requirements and abide by the regulations the recipient can be replaced." What does this mean? Does this mean the grant is awarded to another tribe?

" Included in NAHASDA are tenant rights to notification of eviction and just cause for eviction. Drug use is listed and the Public and Assisted Housing Drug Elimination Act of 1990 is cited." I don't really understand why this is relevant. Is it part of the Act? Are these the only things relate to eviction? Why is this important to mention?


 * Impact and Implementation

Make sure to site properly. It doesn't look as if your sources are listed under the References section. Kgf3585 (talk) 05:43, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Elizabeth's comments
I had some of the same grammatical and spelling corrections as Katie, and agree with her generally, that this is a great start with really good information. I do think that there is a general lack of citations, especially in the Summary section. I was also unclear on what was trying to be communicated in the second major paragraph of the History section. In part I think I am confused because of the sentence structure, but I also wonder if more information is needed on the reasons behind the implementation of a new program. Additionally, I did not understand the connection between drug use and NAHASDA mentioned in the last sentence of the summary (is drug use a cause for eviction?). In the Criticisms section, has there been in resolution to the problems? Specifically, the tobacco shop issue.

Other than some inconsistencies in terminologies, some clarity needed grammatically and additional citations, this is a strong beginning. I would like some additional information about the problems identified that initiated the creation of NAHASDA, resolutions to any controversies and perhaps a look at the future of the program to complete the picture. Elizabeth Cooper (talk)

Instructor comments
I think you are doing a nice job filling in the details about the Act. I agree with both Elizabeth and Katie about the language. You do have some citations to clean up, as Elizabeth notes.

I'm wondering where else you are going to look for information about this Act and assessments of it. GAO is a great source. Check the Journal of Housing and Community Development Law and the Real Estate Finance Journal. While a search of Web of Science did not turn up anything, Google Scholar had some leads on articles that speak to initial concerns about its implementation and subsequent experience with this law. There are also some articles about affordable housing in Indian Country that talk about the role of NAHASDA in the larger picture of tribal affordable housing. A search of world cat using "affordable housing in Indian country" as a search term turned up:

Pierson, Brian L. 2010. "Developing Affordable Housing in Indian Country" Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law; Spring/Summer2010, Vol. 19 Issue 3/4, p367-390. (talks about the context for and role of NAHASDA).

I like that you consider criticisms of the Act in an attempt to present multiple opinions about it. I look forward to seeing how the rest of the article takes shape.Rachel Garshick Kleit (talk) 06:54, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Janine's Comments
This is a really good start to your article. As is already stated here on the discussion board, you might want to look at grammar and citations. For the history section, is there anything in the history of Native American housing assistance worth citing/noting pre-1994 that led to the creation of NAHASDA? This might make the history section richer. I agree with Elizabeth that more on the history and the future would give a more complete picture. Jfraser25 (talk) 07:35, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Ambassador
This is off to a good start and looks, from the comments above, that there could be more work to build out the page. However, has this been submitted for review. Once it goes live, you will probably get more feedback from the Wikipedia community to help expand the article.Jktanaka (talk) 04:37, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Kalle's response
Actually, we chose to update an existing Wikipedia page rather than create a new one, so this one is already live. However, it looks like before us, no one had really paid any major attention to this page since 2010. I was hoping maybe the original authors were keeping tabs on the page and would make some comments, but perhaps they do not have their "watchlist" set up. We did get one comment that a statement in the "criticisms" section needed a citation. I agree that it does need a citation, but neither Allison nor I added that particular statement (it was on the page before our edits) so I wasn't comfortable deleting it. Since it might be a valid concern, I would rather that the original authors stopped by and added the citation or deleted the comment themselves.Wkspeer (talk) 20:01, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Peer review from Protonk
Hi, I'm an online ambassador in the US education program and I have been asked to take a look at this article and give some general comments. Many of these will be only suggestions and you can (and should) click through to some of the style guides and policies I link to determine for yourself if my comments merit large changes in the article.

Style

 * The formatting of references on this page is one I'm particularly fond of. It isn't too common in printed works but it functions very well for wikipedia articles with many different references.  A few things I would change:
 * The "References" section can be a bulleted list rather than a numbered list (use * instead of #)
 * The individual references inside the notes sections can be improved somewhat. Bare URLs are subject to something called "link rot" where if the destination page is updated or removed it can be very difficult for editors to find the new page or otherwise maintain the reference.  Wherever possible you want to include the title, the author and the name of the organization hosting the page.  For an example of what I am talking about see footnotes 15 and 16.  they link to a Hawaii state government and an OHA website respectively but if those pages change we will only have the URL to attempt to find out where they went or what they said before the change.
 * Some references can include links to online sources. This article does a good job of that mostly but don't be afraid to link to the New York Times webpage or even a gated copy of the Seton Hall Legislative Journal.
 * The lede is good. Some editors may want it to be longer (a lede for an article of this size can be 4 paragraphs before getting really out of hand) but as it is written it provides a short summary of the content so it does the job well.
 * You might want to consider adding a "see also" section. This is much more personal preference than anything else.  If you add wikilinks to a number of terms and still feel that there are other articles which aren't linked in the body but still may relate to your article you can add them in their own section.  Some people like these sections, some people don't.
 * You have some terms and government agencies "wikilinked" already. That's good.  I would suggest browsing through the article imagining that a layperson was reading it.  What phrases, concepts or words might they run across and want more information?
 * A section heading like "Implementation and Impact" need only capitalize the first word. the rest of the sections look good ("Act" in "Summary of the Act" being a shorthand for the noun name for the legislation means it should still be capitalized, I think).  This is a simple change so I went ahead and did it.
 * "With regard to improving the housing supply, grant money was used to rehabilitate existing housing units and construct new units." this sentence might be better with a shorter beginning clause or even simply "Grant money was used to rehabilitate existing housing units and construct new units." the reader can be trusted to know that the grants are used for housing supply.  This is a very minor suggestion and a matter of preference so you can take it or leave it.
 * Overall the style of the article is great. It looks and feels like an article which has been on Wikipedia for years.  There are some minor comments I have which relate both to style and content but they are not critical.

Content/Tone

 * "Furthermore, despite tribe’s heavy utilization..." should be tribes'
 * "the American Indian and Alaska Native 1994 Policy Statement sought to..." At the top of this paragraph you refer to HUD making a policy statement but don't name it. Here you refer to the name without directly indicating that you mean the same policy statement.  This may seem minor but an omission like this can cause a reader to backtrack in the text and interrupt the flow of the article.  You may want to briefly mention it at the beginning of the paragraph so you can call back to it later.  If you feel doing so impairs the readability of the paragraph then feel free to disregard this comment.
 * "On October 26, 1996, NAHASDA officially became public law." you have the implementation date noted in a later section.  Consider adding it here as well.  Also, was there a gradual phase in for some of the provisions or did they all take effect in 1997?  I notice you have grant phase in dates but sometimes restrictions or other elements of a law have phase in dates as well.
 * "Summary of the Act" This section is straightforward and appears factual and matter of fact. However with the exception of the subsection on native Hawaiians there is only one reference and it is to the act itself.  Is there a source which discusses the various parts of the act as they were written and reports on which were likely to be the most important?  Some of these sources may be cited in the "Implementation and impact" section.  If so you can use your judgment to cite those same sources in the summary section.  The Footnotes help page has a short guide on how to do this without adding clutter.
 * "tripled the number of housing units developed or planned by Native Americans per year compared to the yearly average..." Another minor question. Which year's average?  1996?

Criticism section
I have broken these out because they are complaints which come up often on Wikipedia articles with "criticism" sections and so aren't immediately linked with general content or tone problems.


 * The end of the first paragraph in the "Criticism" section has a citation needed tag. another concern is unsupported attribution.  Anytime the text of the article reads "some people say" or "some researchers say" it is often valuable to identify the speaker.  Who, specifically sees HUD as being too permissive or too restrictive.  The worry here is anyone can edit these article so we don't want contentious claims made in the voice of the encyclopedia.  As writers we usually understand we cannot say "I feel..." in a wikipedia article but it feels natural to say "some people feel..."  Unfortunately from the standpoint of a critical reader both of those statements are equivalent.
 * "Early in its existence, there was many a complaint from tribes..." Again, which tribes? Who complained?  Tribal governments?  Newspapers?  It is very easy to fall into the habit of attributing claims to unspecified people particularly when you know those claims were true or you have a source that says basically the same thing.  But a great wikipedia article will take pains to avoid this phrasing because without a specific source we can't interrogate the claim fully.
 * "selling tax-free tobacco at rather high profit margins..." (emphasis mine). What is a "rather high" margin?  Be careful not to let your summary of a source allow an editorial voice to creep into the article.  Remember, every article should speak with the voice of the encyclopedia and strive to be as neutral as possible.  An alternative to stating that profit margins are rather high would be to simply state the profit margin.  Failing to do so leaves the reader with the insinuation that gains from selling tobacco on reservations are somehow ill-gotten.
 * "The use of resources alarmed not only those who saw..." Who saw it? Who was alarmed?  I sympathize with you here as criticism sections are notoriously hard to write fairly and without resorting to unsupported attribution.  In both this case and the previous paragraph you are likely paraphrasing (legitimately) the Washington Post and New York Times.  However their status as national papers of record offers them much more latitude in making a claim like that.  We can trust that a reporter writing for the Times saying " there was many a complaint" actually went out and interviewed tribal leaders or members and used their expertise to collate and present those objections.  In contrast a Wikipedia article could be written by someone in their pajamas in front of a computer screen at a library.  We can't trust those anonymous editors with the same task so our restrictions need to be much more strict in order to allow readers to trust the content.

Overall
In general this is an excellent article. My complaints above are very minor and could just as easily apply to an article going through the good article nomination process written by an experienced wikipedian. this article is a credit to the encyclopedia and was fun to read. Protonk (talk) 05:51, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Revisions following Reviews
Thank you Protonk and Grondemar for your excellent reviews. I took some time tonight to revise the article according to each of your comments. I started out by fixing and updating both the notes and references sections, which included adding some new citations. I also added a few more Wikilinks throughout the article. Rather than go through item by item with the rest of the edits, I will list what I have not done yet:


 * Added an infobox. I think I'll work on this tomorrow, though.  I agree that this would be good to have.
 * Added "phase-in dates" for parts of the act. I re-read the act to confirm that there was indeed only one official phase in date, which was already stated in the article
 * Added more references to the "Summary" section. Since all of the information except for the section about Title VIII came from the act itself, I assumed no further citation was necessary.  I will look more at the footnote help page that you linked me to, though, and go back through the sources in the "implementation" section to see what I can add.  Also, let me know what you found out from your survey of other legislative articles.
 * Deleted the "Criticism" section. As I stated earlier on the talk page, other authors added this section to the article before my partner and me made our additions, so while I felt comfortable revising other sections, I was hesitant to delete this section outright. I wanted to give the authors a chance to respond in case they had the page on their watchlists. But looking at the revision history, I doubt that will happen. If there are no other objections, I would be happy just to delete the section entirely.

I will continue to work on the article in the next few days. Thanks again! Wkspeer (talk) 06:19, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the criticism section can be saved. Simply removing a few of the weasel words would go a long way toward rehabilitating it.  One alternative may be to take the material in the criticism section and integrate it into the rest of the text (even roughly by copy-pasting paragraphs) and removing the standalone section. Protonk (talk) 00:05, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I reviewed the criticism section to see if it could be saved. At first, I just deleted the first paragraph because of the biased tone, and I felt having only two examples of disputes did not constitute "much debate," and one of the claims lacked a citation anyway. I then reviewed the articles cited to see if I could use them to make the section less weaselly. From what I read, the article actually had little to do with the claim being made.  The second cited article did apply to its content, but the content itself also seemed like it was making a little issue bigger than it was. In the end, I have decided to just delete the section. Wkspeer (talk) 04:28, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:34, 2 January 2023 (UTC)