HAC is proud to present our 2024 Loan Fund Impact Report. In fiscal year 2024 (October 2023-September 2024), our Loan Fund provided $29.3 million in financing through 46 loans—including 39% made to minority-led borrowers—to build, rehabilitate, or preserve 1,566 affordable homes. Additionally, $14.5 million was invested in preserving 1,097 affordable homes.
Helping rural communities is what we live for at the Housing Assistance Council (HAC.) Our team loves to make loans to local organizations building affordable housing. We get excited about posting data and publishing research on rural conditions. We are relentless advocates for public- and private-sector programs that bring good-quality homes to rural families. We are inspired by the thousands of local housing providers that come to trainings and call for one-on-one technical assistance. 
One of our favorite examples of the last year comes from a local partner in New Waverly, Texas (pop. 914,) Launched nearly 25 years ago, Walker Montgomery Community Development Corporation (WMCDC) builds affordable housing in several Gulf Coast counties. Like most rural groups we know, they rely on local ingenuity to get things done. For instance, WMCDC helped address a construction workforce shortage in Southeast Texas by recruiting 40 participants a year into the Gulf Coast Trades Center’s YouthBuild program. These youth learn valuable professional skills while completing an average of 2 new homes per year.
Yet, it’s hard work building affordable housing through a YouthBuild program. There will be times when you need a partner to keep you going. So, when WMCDC hit more challenges with their labor supply and getting families ready to own a home, they asked HAC for help. The first thing we did is listen to WMCDC leaders discuss the challenges. Then together we explored options and planned how they could maintain production. With contacts around Walker and Montgomery counties, the CDC engaged a general contractor to fill in for the YouthBuild crews and HAC provided training in homebuyer recruitment to keep the pipeline of families ready and strong.
Through projects big and small, HAC brings to local partners the capacity they need to keep going. With your support, we can continue to help WMCDC and hundreds of other rural housing groups. Please join in this work that we love by making HAC a part of your year-end giving. Together, we will help rural communities build good homes and prosper.
We wish you—and everyone in #rural America—a safe, healthy, and affordable place to call home. Happy Holidays from HAC!
A board of directors is essential to any organization, offering more than just advice—they provide guidance, leadership, and support that shape its direction and success. Their insights and commitment help ensure an organization stays true to its mission while also navigating challenges and driving innovation.
HAC’s board plays a vital role in guiding our mission. Their leadership and diverse perspectives keep us grounded in our values while driving innovation and lasting impact in rural America’s most vulnerable communities.
I’d like to give special recognition to two retiring board members, Peter Carey and Naomi Scipio. Their passion for our mission has left a lasting mark on HAC and the communities we serve, and we’re deeply grateful for their years of service.
Lastly, I’m excited to share that our recent staff retreat in California was a resounding success. It provided a valuable opportunity for HACsters to explore challenges and opportunities in rural housing, equipping us to move forward with a stronger mission. Thank you for your unwavering support as we continue this journey together!
As part of the Duty to Serve program, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently published their proposed 2025-2027 Underserved Markets Plans for public comment. This program requires the GSEs to focus on historically underserved markets, including rural housing, affordable housing preservation, and manufactured housing. HAC provided feedback on these proposed plans, addressing various aspects and offering insights into each market. To read our full response and explore our detailed feedback, check out the article here: https://ruralhome.org/hac-comments-on-proposed-gse-duty-to-serve-plans-for-2025-2027/.
HAC’s annual all-staff retreat in Fresno, California, from September 15-18 was a transformative experience that strengthened team bonds and deepened our understanding of the communities we serve. A highlight of the retreat was touring Self-Help Enterprises, where we saw firsthand the impact of community-driven development in rural areas. We also explored the natural beauty of Sequoia & Kings Canyon, including a 45-minute walking tour of Grant Tree. The retreat reinforced our understanding that investments in the capacity of a rural organization like SHE can be transformative for communities across rural America.
The accountant is responsible for applying technical and leadership skills to guide accounting practices and recording of transactions. The successful candidate will have experience in a complex organization and demonstrate a balanced communication style and strong critical thinking skills. The position will report to and work closely with the Financial Controller. The accountant must thrive in a deadline-oriented and evolving workplace. In addition, this role partners with other HAC Team members in tactical implementation of HAC’s mission and commitments to meeting the organization’s strategic plan.
The Program Manager of the Center for Rural Multifamily Housing Preservation (CRMHP) will be the entrepreneurial leader of the CRMHP, providing leadership, subject matter expertise and day-to-day oversight of the Center’s work.
Goals:
The RRHPC Manager will collaborate across HAC’s divisions to accomplish these goals
HAC would like to present its Annual Report for the year 2023.
Download the 2023 Annual Report
The communities we serve are the heart of what we do.
In May 2023, staff and board members from the Housing Assistance Council (HAC) travelled to Ruskin, Florida, to forge a plan to expand our impact and improve our work over the next three years. In our three-day retreat, we toured homes under construction at Bayou Pass Village, a community of about 500 homes, all built by their homeowners with investments from HAC and the support of our local partner.
HACsters got to see firsthand the communities that our work helps build. Against this backdrop, we began to develop a strategic plan that is rooted in these communities. From improving our strategic partnerships with organizations working in historically disinvested regions to expanding our role as the “Voice of Rural America” and our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, this plan puts HAC on a trajectory to make an even more profound and lasting impact.
By all measures, 2023 was an incredibly successful year for HAC. We built the capacity of 144 rural housing organizations across 49 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. We published the fifth edition of Taking Stock, our flagship analysis of the state of Rural America and its housing. We invested more than $25 million to finance the construction, preservation, or rehab of 780 affordable homes. And, our policy advocacy helped drive new federal resources to rural communities across the country.
HAC is hard at work helping rural communities overcome their greatest housing challenges. Thank you for supporting our impact. We can’t wait to show you what we accomplish next.
The Community Builder plays a crucial role in advancing HAC’s mission, engaging in a range of responsibilities and special projects that focus on place, people, and community-based strategies. With a primary emphasis on developing and sustaining the capacity to improve housing and communities in rural areas, the Community Builder provides direct technical assistance, coaching, and training to nonprofit organizations, local and regional government agencies, and others. This role is key in facilitating affordable housing and community and economic development opportunities through state and federal programs.
HAC is seeking to hire six (6) Community Builders, each bringing expertise in one or more of the following areas: Financial Management and Accountability, Real Estate Finance, Construction Management, Housing on Native American Lands, Community and Public Facilities, Homeless Prevention and Assistance, and Homeowner Rehabilitation.
This position is open to candidates located anywhere in the contiguous United States, within a two-hour drive of a major airport, enabling efficient travel as needed.
For over fifty years, the Housing Assistance Council has empowered rural communities with the resources they need to overcome their greatest housing challenges. That entire time, HAC’s Board of Directors has guided our approach and kept us true to our mission. Our board members have always represented the communities we work with across the country. The expertise they bring has proven invaluable time and time again.
At the National Rural Housing Conference in October 2023, we honored two long-time board members by presenting them with Rural Housing Service Awards as thanks for their combined 66 years of service to HAC. As they transitioned off the board, we asked Maria Luisa Mercado and Gideon Anders to reflect on the past, present, and future of HAC.
Thirty-six years ago, when she was working as an assistant attorney general for consumer protection in Lubbock, Maria Luisa got a call from a colleague who said she’d be an ideal board member at HAC. For Maria Luisa, who grew up as a farmworker, “serving on a housing board, especially one with a rural focus, was really exciting.”
Housing is the core of what HAC does, but she explains that the real goal has always been to serve people and communities. After all, she says “if you can stabilize someone’s housing, you can change their life.” Staying true to this mission has been the core of HAC’s success, she argues. Over the last three decades, Maria Luisa has visited many of the communities with which HAC works, and the impact of our work is always clear. “You can concretely see the results: changing the life of someone,” she notes.
Looking to the future, Maria Luisa believes the defining challenge of the next few decades will be developing novel ways of encouraging the development of new affordable housing groups. As we expand the communities that we serve and develop new partners, building their capacity to make the most of the resources available to them will be crucial. She imagines a future in which HAC has expanded from a focus on housing to include community development and building the capacity of local communities and governments to access state and federal resources.
HAC has always been at the forefront of efforts to support rural communities’ housing and to bring attention to overlooked rural places. “It matters because rural America,” says Maria Luisa “if no one pays attention, is isolated from services.” And those services, like housing investment, are what any community needs to thrive. After more than five decades of serving rural America, Maria Luisa is proud to say that “HAC is still standing.”
Gideon Anders was hired by HAC in 1972—fewer than 8 months after we were founded. As Gideon explains, the HAC of 1972 was still figuring out how to operate: “we did a lot of things by the seat of our pants.” Quickly, though, we established the processes that HAC continues to build on to this day. “Our work is much more effective and reaches out to more organizations” than it once did, Gideon notes.
For the entirety of his time with HAC—both as a staff member and in his 30 years as a board member—something that hasn’t changed is that “there’s no one else providing the assistance that HAC is.” For example, we were one of the first organizations to offer predevelopment lending in rural communities, and our research—especially our flagship publication Taking Stock—fills a void in data and analysis about rural housing.
HAC is still providing resources to rural communities that few others do. To Gideon, HAC’s focus on the preservation of multifamily rental homes in the USDA’s Section 515 program is a key example of the “critical services which no one else is providing on the scale HAC is.” In 2022, for example, HAC closed a $7.8 million loan to Northwest Coastal Housing so they could purchase and preserve Golden Eagle II, a 33-unit USDA Section 515 property. Without our financing, the original property owner would have prepaid his USDA mortgage, making his tenants ineligible for the rental assistance they’d received for decades. But, thanks to this loan, Golden Eagle is staying in the program and the tenants will retain their affordability protections for decades.
Looking to the future, Gideon imagines a HAC that is bringing together organizations of all kinds to collectively make the argument that housing is central to individual and national prosperity. Our homes touch every other part of our lives, which is why Gideon wants to see these coalitions include community service providers of all stripes, including those focused on health. After all, when it comes to the impact on someone’s health, Gideon believes “quality housing comes next to healthcare.”
A lot has changed at HAC over the last 50 years. However, Gideon notes that, “fundamentally, the services HAC was providing in 1971 are still what we’re doing today. But the scope has grown tremendously.”
The Housing Assistance Council (HAC) is dedicated to supporting those who have answered the highest call of service to our nation. Our Affordable Housing for Rural Veterans (AHRV) Initiative aids local nonprofit housing organizations in improving housing conditions for veterans in their communities with support from The Home Depot Foundation. The brick-and-mortar projects that AHRV funds provide critical home repair, rehab, and construction for low-income, elderly, homeless, and/or disabled veterans. All this support is tailored to meet the specific needs of veterans in each community. At HAC’s 2023 National Rural Housing Conference, the Veterans Stakeholder Meeting convened practitioners from around the country to share ideas and best practices. The centerpiece of the meeting was a series of presentations from a panel that included: Housing organizations from across the country benefited from hearing detailed presentations on housing efforts and gained insights on how organizations can work to better support veterans. Here are four key takeaways from the meeting:
The National Rural Housing Conference brought together practitioners from across the country. By sharing ideas as broad as the importance of partnership and as specific as the nitty-gritty of how a question is asked, these leaders learned lessons they can put into practice in their communities. As each community tailors these best practices to meet the specific needs of their veterans, HAC and The Home Depot Foundation will be there, supporting the local initiatives that bring us one step closer to a nation in which all veterans can have a healthy, accessible, and affordable place to call home.
HAC is proud to present our 2023 Loan Fund Impact Report. In fiscal year 2023 (October 2022-September 2023), our Loan Fund provided $31.4 million in financing through 34 loans—including 13 (37%) made to minority-led borrowers—to build, rehabilitate, or preserve 900 affordable homes.