Each issue of HAC’s Rural Voices magazine focuses on a single topic important to rural communities, with subjects ranging from housing for older rural residents to the future of housing finance to citizen-led design. Local rural housing professionals from around the country write most of the articles, sharing their expertise, best practices, and even the mistakes they’ve learned from. To hear when a new issue of the magazine is published, sign up for HAC’s email list or watch for announcements in the HAC News and on social media.

Spring 2003: Homeownership Education and Counseling

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Access a pdf version of Rural Voices.

  • Whither Homeownership Education and Counseling? An Overview
  • Partnerships and Technology Expand Homeownership Counseling Opportunities
  • Keeping a Grip on the American Dream: Counseling Before and After Purchase Helps Homebuyers
  • USDA Rural Development teams with Others to Offer Homebuyer Education in Virginia
  • NCALL Combines Counseling with Financial Assistance for First-Time Buyers in Delaware
  • Homebuyer Education Benefits Ripple Throughout Appalachian Counties
  • Counseling Helps ROI Address Critical Farmworker Housing Needs
  • Understanding: The Key to Meeting Financial Education Needs in the Colonias
  • VIEW FROM WASHINGTON: Rural Housing Funding Decided for 2003, Proposed for 2004

Fall/Winter 2002: Rural Housing and Health

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Access a pdf version of Rural Voices.

  • Coordinated Health and Housing Services Work in Rural Kentucky
  • Promotoras and Environmental Health Awareness in the Colonias
  • Health and Housing: Danger Lurks at Home in Indian Country
  • Improving the Lives of Agricultural Workers
  • Hard to Reach: Rural Homelessness and Health Care
  • Coming to Grips with Lead-based Paint
  • Creating Affordable Allergen-Free Housing: What Rural Developers Need to Know
  • VIEW FROM WASHINGTON: Appropriations and Authorizations Stalled in Congress

Summer 2002: Rural Housing Production

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Access a pdf version of Rural Voices.

  • Why Rural America Needs New Affordable Housing
  • Excerpts from Meeting Our Nation’s Housing Challenges: The Report of the Millennial Housing Commission
  • Congress Must Provide Solutions to the Affordable Housing Crisis
  • Campaign for a National Housing Trust Fund Moving Forward
  • State and Local Housing Trust Funds Boost Rural Housing Opportunities
  • Bush Proposes “Renewing the Dream” for 100,000 Low-Income Homebuyers
  • Affordable Housing for Rural America: The Rural Rental Housing Act
  • Local Housing Trust Fund Plus Collaboration Equals Affordable Housing in the Napa Valley
  • Section 515 Remains the Best Choice for Rural Rental Production
  • Q&A with Art Garcia, Rural Housing Service Administrator
  • YouthBuild USA Rural Initiative: Rebuilding Communities, Transforming Lives

Spring 2002: Predatory Lending

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Access a pdf version of Rural Voices.

  • The Myths of Subprime Lending
  • Lending in Iowa’s Rural Communities
  • In Over Our Heads: Profiles in Predatory Lending
  • Defining Predatory Lending
  • Homeownership and Predatory Lending: A Rude Awakening from the American Dream
  • Promising Dreams, Delivering Nightmares: How One Community Fought Back
  • Sweating the Equity: Unscrupulous Lenders Prey on Older Homeowners
  • Taking a Strong Stance Against Predatory Lending
  • VIEW FROM WASHINGTON: Many Programs, Little Help: The Farm Bill and Rural Community Development

Winter 2001 – 02: Get Smart? Growth, Development and Rural Housing

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Access a pdf version of Rural Voices.

  • Why Smart Growth Matters to Rural Communities
  • Sustainable Development for Rural Communities
  • Informing the Smart Growth Debate
  • Smart Growth: More Choices for Rural Development
  • What Smart Growth Management Does for Affordable Housing in Florida
  • Promoting Responsible Growth in Colorado
  • Smart Growth in Rural California
  • Farmworker Housing and Smart Growht Policies in Oregon
  • VIEW FROM WASHINGTON: Easy on the Butter

Fall 2001: Celebrating 30 Years of Building Rural Communities

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Access a pdf version of Rural Voices.

  • Population Change in Rural and Small Town America 1970-2000
  • Thirty Years on the Front Lines
  • The More Things Change…
  • Thirty Years of Supporting Affordable Housing in Rural Communities
  • Then and Now: Early HAC Staffers Remember HAC’s Beginnings
  • Some things Haven’t Changed: Recalling HAC’s Second Loan
  • VIEW FROM WASHINGTON: A Thirty-Year Retrospective
Volume 6 Number 2

Summer 2001: Faith-based Initiatives and Housing Development

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The theme for the Summer 2001 issue of Rural Voices, faith-based initiatives, is ubiquitous these days.

The theme for the Summer 2001 issue of Rural Voices, faith-based initiatives, is ubiquitous these days.

  • Support for the Armies of Compassion
  • Concerns About the President’s Faith-based Initiative: Opeining Public Coffers
  • Faith in Action: Faith-based or Inspired by Faith?
  • AAHSA Members’ Faith-based Housing and Services for the Elderly
  • The B’nai B’rith Senior Housing Program
  • A Collaborative Faith-based Initiative
  • The Challenges of Housing and Conservation
  • Some Myths of Faith-based Enterprise
  • ‘Little Washington’ Has a Big Faith-based Housing and Economic Development Agency
  • A History of Collaboration
  • VIEW FROM WASHINGTON: Faith-based Legislation Advances in Congress
Rural Voices: Lessons from Disaster

Rural Voices: Lessons from Disasters

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The Fall 2000 issue of Rural Voices addresses some of what can be learned from recent major disasters.

Natural disasters remind us how little control we have over our world -homes and lives can be wiped out in seconds. One year ago, Hurricanes Dennis and Floyd devastated large sections of the eastern U.S., with heavy rains and flooding damaging communities far inland. This summer, news stories have focused on fires in the west. Less dramatic disasters happen all the time -a tornado strikes a single town or a river floods in one county.

The Fall 2000 issue of Rural Voices addresses some of what can be learned from recent major disasters. Preparatory steps to guard against damage are summarized by staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Project Impact, which helps to make communities disaster resistant. An experienced architect from Texas presents specific design and construction tips for wind resistance. A Kentucky state official describes her agency’s role in recovering from serious flooding. A Minnesota rural infrastructure expert suggests elements of a manual to guide emergency procedures. And a North Carolina advocate examines the challenges and successes of that state’s ongoing efforts to recover from last year’s hurricanes.

A great deal of additional information is available for rural communities to prepare for and recover from these kinds of disas-ters and others. Most of the articles in this issue suggest sources of further advice, and most of it is available free.

A key theme running through all these articles is the importance of advance planning and preparation. Rural communities can exert some control after all, either to reduce damage or to hasten recovery after a disaster.

Rural Voices: Policy & Rural Housing

Rural Voices: Policy & Rural Housing

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The Summer 2000 issue of Rural Voices examines some aspects of government policies on the federal, state, and local levels, and their impact on housing conditions for low-income rural residents.

Read more

Rural Voices: Initiatives in the Mississippi Delta

Rural Voices: Initiatives in the Mississippi Delta

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The Spring 2000 issue of Rural Voices focuses on the Delta – not so much on its problems, which are well documented, but on what is being done and what can be done to improve its future.

The Mississippi Delta region has made significant contributions to our nation, yet it remains one of the poorest parts of the country. The Spring 2000 issue of Rural Voices focuses on the Delta – not so much on its problems, which are well documented, but on what is being done and what can be done to improve its future.

The issue begins with Representative Bennie Thompson urging us to make a national commitment to improving housing and opportunity, not only in the Delta but in all of rural America, and President Bill Clinton promising federal assistance for the Delta. Most of the magazine contains descriptions of initiatives working to improve housing and to enhance community and economic development in the Delta, written by the people who are actually undertaking the efforts described.

The new Administrator of the Rural Housing Service speaks up in this issue of Rural Voices as well. In a “Q&A” session, James C. Kearney addresses important topics facing his agency in the year 2000. The Administration’s new housing budget for 2001 is mentioned in that interview, and is covered in more detail in our View from Washington department.

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