Lisa Murkowski

How does overcrowding impact emergency preparedness?

When you think about what new housing brings in terms of lower costs, because of just better build and efficiency, dealing with the overcrowding, dealing with the disease aspect of it, because I think we recognize, when you don't have a…

It limits your ability to ensure that when you have a home built, it is a whole home.

Because housing is a basic need. And when our future leaders don't feel that the place that they call home is one that is going to be part of their future, that makes it a very difficult reality for those who are living here today.

That is a hard reality, I agree.

Do we have any programs within the school that might be considered vocational education, actually helping to build put this workforce?

We have a restriction on IHS' ability to serve new homes that were built using grants from HUD housing.

This is not just here in Savoonga, but throughout the State of Alaska. The transportation costs, the high cost of living within the area contribute to the reality that has made it very difficult to do more than bring on one or two units at…

I think it is important that we recognize that the lack of a physical structure or the lack of an adequate, safe, sanitary physical structure has such an extraordinary ripple effect.

Thank you for ensuring that we do have the voice of the young people. You are really the future.

We desperately need the Indian Housing Block Grant to be adequately funded.

I was honored to be a part of the opening ceremony because I know that the new clinics will provide invaluable improvements in providing high quality, modern healthcare.

I took him out here to show him that his one-size-fits-all approach wasn't going to work in Alaska.

I'll never forget the first time I visited here. It was 2009 and I flew out here with Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

I think that is something we see throughout the State, the levels of mold when you don't have adequate ventilation.

I think it is significant, talking about the construction challenges.

But also, you spoke a little bit, Chris, about the jobs, and the fact that you face that you utilized force account.

People would say, you have all this land, why don't you just build houses everywhere.

Thank you for raising that.

We all know that housing is more than just a structure, and how it impacts the social issues and the well-being of our families is important.

I think that this is probably, perhaps most certainly, the very first ever Congressional hearing that has been held in Savoonga, Alaska.

I just want you to keep some of those things in mind.

To think that through these grants we are achieving outcomes like we are seeing Ms. Hummingbird articulate here, it is not just, again, about keeping a language alive; it is a culture, it is an identity, it is a purpose, a sense of self…

When a Native person knows their language, they know their culture, they know who they are; it is part of their identity.

What we are seeing in the young children, what we are seeing in the results coming out of the school, measurements of academic success have been really extraordinarily impressive.