SAN FRANCISCO – PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. is having a busy summer in Indian country.

The mortgage insurer, based here, has participated in a Habitat for Humanity home project on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota, made educational grants to benefit the Sicangu and Oglala Lakota, and established a fund to facilitate housing on the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico.

The $125,000 grant to the Pueblo of Acoma Housing Authority is said to be the first private funding for housing for the pueblo, whose “Sky City” site has been continuously occupied for the past 800 years.

Previously, tribal members had to rely on public money for housing, much of it manufactured housing. Acoma Housing Authority director Raymond J. Concho Jr. said the money will help young families who make too much money to benefit from federal low-income housing programs, but who have been unable to access mortgage financing from private lenders.

The grant will fund a “revolving” loan facility to build two houses initially and create opportunities for homeownership.

Repayments from those pueblo members will go towards additional loans to other members.

The fund is similar to one PMI funded for the Navajo Partnership for Housing in St. Michaels, Ariz. It used the money to buy old homes on the Navajo Nation, rehab them and then sell them to tribal members, in effect creating a real estate market on the reservation for the first time.

Employees of PMI, including chief executive Roger Haughton, went to the Rosebud in mid-June to help build a new house for Sophie DeGraff, Lakota, and her husband Clyde. Daughter Yvonne and grandson, Michael Coddington, will live there with them.

Ms. DeGraff described herself as handicapped and unable to afford a home.

PMI employees were joined by workers from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, its partner in a venture to bring mortgage lending to American Indian reservations, and the Sicangu Tikaga Okiciyapi affiliate of Habitat for Humanity. PMI is a frequent Habitat participant. One project on the Cheyenne River Reservation in 1995 built two dozen homes for tribal members.

At the dedication of the Rosebud home, built in a week, Haughton announced two educational grants from PMI and Wells Fargo meant to spur homeownership on the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations.

The Sicangu Enterprise Center received $5,000, while the Oglala Sioux Tribe Partnership for Housing received $10,000. The center provides credit counseling training and support, and promotes regional economic self-sufficiency.

The OST Partnership is one of two of former President Bill Clinton’s “One Stop” mortgage efforts to bring homeownership onto reservations. It has built and arranged financing for some 20 homes on Pine Ridge.

PMI and Wells Fargo have committed more than $1 million to the Joint Native American Lending Effort. PMI alone committed to insure $100 million in mortgages for nearly 20 different tribes. Not a mortgage lender, it insures repayment of the first 20 percent of a loan, preparing the mortgage to qualify for purchase by secondary mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The “secondary” market gives lenders an incentive to make the mortgages and make them more cheaply.