About HAC - Annual Reports
George Ballis / There Is More Work To Be Done
George Ballis / There Is More Work To Be Done
Annual Report 2006
In 2006 the Housing Assistance Council marked its 35th anniversary by celebrating the partnerships that make it successful. HAC’s partners include committed funders, colleagues and coalitions at the national, state, regional, and local levels, and, most importantly, local rural housing organizations. From experienced nonprofits serving multi-county areas to new groups struggling to hire staff, it is the organizations grounded in their own communities that devote every day to finding the dollars, materials, and hours to provide decent, affordable homes for all rural Americans.
HAC too brings something special to its partnerships. It is a rural housing expert, a lender, a grantmaker, a technical assistance provider, a training institute, a conference host, a research facility, and a publisher. This annual report shows how these functions combine to address homeownership and rental housing challenges across rural America.
HAC’s major accomplishments during 2006 included:
- convening the National Rural Housing Conference in December 2006, bringing together over 700 rural housing practitioners,policymakers, funders, and others;
- committing 67 loans totaling nearly id=mce_marker7 million to 53 organizations in 25 states to help create or preserve almost 1,000 decent, affordable homes for rural Americans;
- implementing a new $5.5 million Preservation Revolving Loan Fund to help save USDA-financed rental properties;
- holding conferences on rental preservation and green building;
- improving local rural organizations’ abilities to help their own communities through targeted trainings, exchanges with experienced peer organizations, one-on-one technical assistance, and grants to cover essential capacity building expenses;
- providing direct financial assistance to rural housing organizations in places devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and helping to keep rural issues on the agenda of other organizations; and
- informing policymakers, researchers, advocates, and local rural housing groups about important subjects including manufactured housing, asset-building, predatory lending, rural homelessness, and more.
Thank you for supporting HAC as it begins its 36th year of hard work to improve housing conditions for rural Americans.
