'Vicious' politics gets blame for nepotism
 
If he had come from one of his tribe's "important" families, his problem would have been addressed instantly.

John Renville is convinced of it.

But Renville, a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, isn't important or influential. He's disabled. He's poor. And he has been openly critical of tribal leaders.

That put him on the lowest rung of the unofficial tribal ladder.

When he complained to his tribe's housing authority that he thought his government-subsidized house had a gas leak, he could get no action.

He found out later that the house indeed contained lethal levels of carbon monoxide, and that he and his children had been at grave risk for years.

Renville says it was only "by the grace of God we all survived."

Family told not to worry

The ordeal began in 1990, when Renville and his children moved into an old house built with Department of Housing and Urban Development money. The house was not in great shape: wood was rotting, shingles were falling, a sewer line was cracking, and metal on the basement furnace was badly corroding.

But rent was cheap and Renville, with a $7,000 annual income, could not be picky.

The family noticed that every winter, when the house was shuttered against the cold, they would get headaches and feel drowsy. Renville quit smoking, but that didn't help. He had been disabled years ago in a car accident, but that wouldn't explain why his son and daughter were sick, too.

In early 1994, Renville asked officials of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Housing Authority, which oversees HUD housing on the reservation, to check for a possible gas leak.

Maintenance Director Dennis Keeble told Renville not to worry about the gas smell. And though the housing authority had money from HUD to keep its houses in good repair, Renville says Keeble told him it would cost too much to find the cause of the smell.

One night after he dreamed he was dying, Renville wrote a letter to the housing authority and visited the executive director, Ron Jones.

Jones "got very mad," Renville recalled. "He said to me, 'You don't have to live in these houses. If you don't like it here, why don't you get the hell out?' "

In May 1994, Renville and his children saw a public-health nurse about their symptoms. The nurse sent an Indian Health Service inspector to test the house with a dosimeter. The inspector found that carbon-monoxide fumes in the house were, at a minimum, 312 times the highest allowable level for human exposure.

The odorless gas was coming from the corroded furnace, and it had likely been that way for years. That amount and concentration of gas can kill without warning. The inspector recommended evacuating the house immediately.

Renville moved his family into a pup tent.

'That happens ... every day'

The housing authority found him temporary quarters, but Renville is a persistent man. He took his case all the way to HUD Deputy Assistant Secretary Dominic Nessi, the man in charge of the agency's Indian-housing program.

Officials at the Sisseton-Wahpeton Housing Authority say they would have helped Renville anyway. But after he contacted Nessi he got a new furnace and his house was fully remodeled.

"Why it had to come to me here in Washington before a housing authority handles the concerns of their own people, I don't know," Nessi said. "That happens around the country every day. You would think tribal members would help each other out."

But critics of HUD's Indian-housing program say Nessi and others in HUD share the blame. They say the 1992 decision to drastically cut back regulations and oversight of Indian-housing authorities is at the root of the trouble.

The lack of oversight opens the door to rampant favoritism, they say.

Current and former officials of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Housing Authority admit favoritism was the norm at their agency.

Jones, who has since resigned as director, says he was pressured by powerful tribal-council members to grant favors with HUD money. But he said he referred all demands for favors to an elected housing-authority board. If favors were done, he said, it was the board's fault.

"Tribal politics is vicious," Jones said.

David Selvage, who was assistant director under Jones, said he saw his boss of eight years cave to pressure. Selvage has felt the pressure himself.

Last fall, Selvage objected after the authority bought a 20-year-old trailer with a leaky roof from an employee for $13,000.

Not only was it a violation of a HUD prohibition against purchasing from employees, the trailer was bought with money intended for repairing HUD houses. Add the cost of moving and setting up the trailer, and the total bill of $19,000 was 7 percent of that year's HUD grant for rehabilitation.

When Selvage pointed out the deal was illegal, certain council members tried to prevent the news from spreading.

'I needed to keep my mouth shut'

"Through the grapevine, people were saying basically that I needed to keep my mouth shut," said Selvage. "It was keep my mouth shut, or start looking for a new job."

But Selvage kept looking closely at the housing-authority books. He discovered that the agency's records were a mess and full of improprieties. Jones was forced to resign, and Selvage was appointed to replace him in May.

Critics say Selvage is already taking advantage of his new position: Somehow, he has been placed on an exclusive list to receive one of 27 new HUD houses being built on the reservation this year.

That rankles some because these subsidized houses are precious in a community where tribal leaders estimate 1,200 people need homes.

Selvage already owns a house in his hometown of Sisseton, and has a salary of $37,000 a year, well over the limit for a HUD house. In addition, his wife brings in more income from her job at the tribal casino.

Also on the list for houses are five other housing-authority employees, a board member, an assistant to the tribal secretary and six other people who already have homes.

Although these actions violate the spirit of the law, they do not violate the letter of the current HUD rules under deregulation. The new relaxed rules allow for this kind of nepotism. And many of these prospective homeowners will get their HUD houses at highly discounted prices — again because of new rules that allow housing authorities to set any price they want.

The rest of the tribe can only stand back aghast and helpless, said Renville. Those who live in HUD units are afraid to speak up, he said, because "they are afraid they will be kicked out of their homes."