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House hearing spotlights bill to set deadlines for Bureau of Indian Affairs mortgage reviews
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Summary
A House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing examined HR 2130, which would set timeframes and oversight for Bureau of Indian Affairs mortgage processing on Indian trust land, and heard testimony on long delays that advocates say block homeownership in Indian country.
Representative Dusty Johnson opened the hearing by introducing HR 2130, the Tribal Trust Land Homeownership Act of 2025, which would require the Bureau of Indian Affairs to process residential and business mortgage packages on Indian trust land within specified timeframes and adopt private-sector standards for review.
The bill "would establish private industry aligned standards for the review and approval of trust land mortgages," Representative Johnson said, noting that "the current private industry standard for processing a mortgage package is within 1 month." He said the measure aims to replicate that timeline in the BIA.
Eric Shepherd, executive director of the Sisseton Wahpeton Housing Authority and vice chair of the South Dakota Native Homeownership Coalition, testified that processing delays at the BIA range from months to years and that the bill would modernize and streamline BIA systems. "Often homebuyers on trust land ... feel like their mortgage packages fall into a black hole somewhere within the depths of the BIA," Shepherd said. He told the subcommittee that the BIA's title status reports (TSRs) can take anywhere from three months to up to five years to produce and that some tribes experience delays of up to 365 days.
HR 2130 would establish timelines for processing leasehold mortgages, right-of-way documents, land mortgages and TSRs; require read-only access to the BIA's land management database (TAMs) for tribes and federal agencies; mandate a study on digitization costs; and create a realty ombudsman to report to the Interior Department supervising official, proponents said. Shepherd said the ombudsman should have authority to act on compliance questions.
Committee members pushed for specifics on where delays occur and pressed witnesses about whether staffing and transparency are the underlying causes. Shepherd said that while some regional offices are responsive, many smaller or remote tribes lack consistent access and information and that the bill's timelines would help create accountability.
The hearing record will include additional statements from the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of Agriculture entered by unanimous consent. The committee took no final votes on HR 2130 during the hearing; members asked witnesses to supply further written responses to follow-up questions.
