After 40 years of planning, waiting, and building, all of Newtok’s residents have made the 9-mile move across the Ninglick River to Mertarvik. More than two dozen families moved into temporary housing in the fall of 2024, including Rosemary John, five of her kids, and her husband.
The Johns left behind a much larger three-bedroom house in Newtok to move into a temporary home. New and permanent housing in Mertarvik has living space that can accommodate large families like theirs, but there isn’t enough permanent housing in the new community for everyone. And because the temporary house is tiny, a recent birthday party for John’s youngest son also had to be small.
“It was just us and nobody else, besides my mom and two nephews,” John said. Back in Newtok there could have been a lot more people to share cake and celebrate, she said, but here, “there’s just not enough space to do that.”
The John family is living in a space that’s just over 800 square feet. There’s not enough space for a table and chairs in the kitchen, and the ceiling in the lofted space upstairs isn’t tall enough for John’s twin 18-year old sons, Thaddeus and Samuel, to stand.
When the wind blows outside, the house rattles on the inside. The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta coast of Alaska is known for dramatic weather and damp, gusting winds that carry rain and snow from the Bering Sea more than a dozen miles away. Conditions change quickly and sometimes without warning.
It’s the kind of place where building design really matters, and John isn’t convinced that this tiny home can hold up. “I don't like the way it's built,” she said. “There's too many things wrong with the home. I don't want my family to be living in a moldy home, you know?”
Over the last six months, water has run down the inside of her walls several times. With seven people inside, plus a couple of dogs who run in and out, John said that she’s afraid to even hang her laundry up to dry. “I don't want to hang anything in the house because it'll be too moist,” said John. “There's only one vent in the range hood and that's it.”
John said that her old house back in Newtok had vents in every room. “If it gets too moist, we could just open the vent. Here we can't do that.”
Next door, Dionne Kilongak works each day from a small folding table in her kitchen. She’s also finding problems in her tiny house.
“I think these aren't for Alaska,” Kilongak said.
Kilongak’s house is so close to John’s that they can hear each other through the walls. “We don’t open the window because you can see neighbors,” said Kilongak.
Behind the curtain she uses to block the neighbors’ view, she points out fuzzy black mold spreading across the windowsill. She blames its growth on a combination of poor air circulation, moisture buildup, and inadequate heating. “Because we live in Alaska, it's cold and the mold builds up like in the corners where heat isn't really going. Like, even behind the bed there’s mold that’s trying to build up.” Kilongak, her family, and her dog have lived in the house for six months.
There are 18 of these tiny homes in Mertarvik. Nearly a third of the community’s total population – about 90 people – lives in them.
In August 2024, the Newtok Village Council made the decision that everyone needed to move out of Newtok for safety. According to council members, the money to build and ship the tiny homes to Mertarvik came from a $25 million grant from the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). At the time, the federal agency said that it was going to help the community complete its move as a “demonstration project,” – something the agency hadn’t done before.
Kilongak said that she expected to live in the tiny home for a year. John said that she was told the homes were temporary. “When we had the Zoom meeting, maybe last year, they said these tiny homes, it'll be yours. You could either add it on to your new home or use it as storage,” John remembered.
Now, the Trump Administration has frozen the federal funds that were supposed to pay for permanent housing to replace the tiny homes.
“If we're stuck in this small house, maybe about two years, I'm thinking about moving somewhere to get a job,” said 18-year old Thaddeus John. He just graduated from high school and he's one of the first to receive a diploma that says Mertarvik instead of Newtok. Most of his belongings are still back at his old house, and there are other things he misses.
“We don't have a steam bath here and we don't have anything to hang the food we have to dry up,” Thaddeus said. He also explained that he has a lot to learn on this side of the river when it comes to hunting for food in Mertarvik, including for things like spring ptarmigan. “Here it's different, they fly easily. I don't really know where to hunt around here except back there. I'm used to hunting ptarmigan and other birds over at Newtok,” he said.
For his entire life, Thaddeus and the rest of his family have been told that the sacrifices of a move to Mertarvik would give his family stability after decades of living on thawing permafrost and eroding ground. Now they have finally made that move, but with no clear path to a permanent home.
This reporting was supported by the Alaska Center for Excellence in Reporting.
