Yerington complex renovation fraught with complexity

It may have been only a $130,000 transaction to renovate a four-unit apartment building, but the complexities of the just-completed deal in Yerington were daunting.

A lender with Nevada State Bank who refused to give up provided many of the keys that made the project a reality.

The Yerington Paiute Tribal Housing Authority this month became the first tribal unit in Nevada to obtain a grant through an affordable housing program of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.

The money will pay for renovation of the four-plex building that was left uninhabitable after a flood 10 years ago. Loretta Johnson, chairperson of the housing authority, noted the units are badly needed by low- and moderate-income families because Yerington has a limited supply of rentals.

But although the need was great, the housing authority struggled to find the money.

In 2003, it received a federal grant but the money wasn't enough to complete the work.

Nevada State Bank provided a loan to the housing authority, with the thought that a grant from Federal Home Loan Bank would allow the bank to be repaid.

But the Federal Home Loan Bank hadn't been involved with housing on tribal lands, and the Yerington Paiute Tribal Housing Auth-ority couldn't get through the agency's hoops.

The biggest problem: Because the housing units are on tribal land a sovereign nation by point of law the property didn't have any value that could be described in the application.

That's where Jay Hiner, a community reinvestment officer for Nevada State Bank, stepped into the picture.

Relentless and talkative, Hiner spent hours on the phone with federal agencies, took the housing authority's case to the highest executive suites of the bank and made repeated trips from his Las Vegas office to the Yerington area.

He educated the Federal Home Loan Bank about tribal affairs. He convinced his bosses to stay with him. He educated the housing authority about the ways of the federal government.

"I have a passion to help people," Hiner says. "They just didn't know what options were out there. I told them, 'I'm not giving up on you.'"

Ultimately, he convinced the Home Loan Bank board to view the tribe's land as a donation a definition that federal employees were accustomed to seeing in applications and the funding was approved.

"It's hard to make a wing-tipped oxford look like a sneaker," Hiner says. "That was my challenge."

The tribe arranged training in construction trades so its members could handle reconstruction of the apartment building.