INDIAN ISLAND – Federal, regional and local housing officials met Friday with members of the Penobscot Indian Nation as part of an outreach tour to learn about the needs and successes of Maine American Indians when it comes to tribal housing.

“You don’t really learn all that much by just sitting in your office,” Michael Liu, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s assistant secretary for public and Indian housing, said Friday.

Chief Barry Dana, members of the tribal council, Indian Island Housing Authority Director Craig Sanborn, and members of the island’s housing committee told Liu and the regional and local HUD officials about housing projects in the works and shared their needs and concerns for the future at the gathering.

The group was originally scheduled to meet Thursday morning, but the HUD officials were not able to attend because of scheduling constraints. The officials had visited other reservations in Maine this week to discuss similar issues.

During Friday’s visit, HUD officials said they were impressed with the tribe’s assisted-living facility, which is being built across the road from the Indian Island Elementary School and is scheduled to be completed by January.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development provided some grant money for the construction and operation of the facility that will house six tribal members who can no longer care for themselves.

“Once we get operational, it will be the only one in Indian country in the state of Maine,” Sanborn said in a previous interview.

Obtaining mortgages has been another struggle for tribal members in the past. Before 2002, only five home mortgages had been issued to tribal members because banks had no way to get at the capital in case the customer defaulted on the loan.

With the development of Four Directions Development Corp., tribal members are now able to get mortgages much more easily.

FDDC, a nonprofit community development financial institution, assists members of Maine’s American Indian tribes: the Aroostook Band of Micmac Indians, the Houlton Band of Maliseets, the Passamaquoddy Tribes of Indian Township and Pleasant Point and the Penobscot Nation. FDDC focuses on financing affordable housing and business enterprises for members of these four tribes, known as the Wabanaki Alliance.

And it appears that the program is successful. In the last two years, 25 mortgages have been issued to tribal members, according to Sanborn.

“There is still a lot of work that we have to do,” Sanborn said, noting that the Penobscots are embarking on another housing venture off the reservation.

The tribe has purchased 700 acres in Argyle, which is receiving soil tests and is being surveyed to determine the feasibility of putting a tribal housing development on the site.

“We’re literally an island community, and essentially we have run out of land,” Sanborn explained.

Penobscot leaders are working to have the land entered into the land trust, but say the process is slow, and with a waiting list of about 40 people, the need is urgent.

On top of the delays in the legislative and legal process, the tribe doesn’t have the money to fund necessities for the project, such as lights and roads, or the money to bus children who live in the development to and from school.

Liu offered suggestions about additional grants and ways to foster economic development that may be able to assist in moving the project forward.

“I will do my best to see what I can do to help,” Liu said. “We don’t want to slow down the momentum that you’ve got.”