Housing Affordability Archives

HAC’s Lance George Discusses Housing Affordability and Tourism with NPR Washington

February 3, 2022/in HAC in the News, News Housing Affordability, Rental Housing

In an interview on the Soundside podcast, Lance George, HAC’s Director of Research and Information, speaks about the importance of affordable housing not only in high amenity rural communities, but in rural communities throughout the U.S. He stresses that housing affordability has been an ongoing problem that is only getting worse and argues that comprehensive community-based solutions are needed to address the issue.

“It’s a misperception that rural communities should be more affordable or shouldn’t have affordability challenges and pressures that you’re know seeing. In fact, housing affordability has always been the challenge in rural communities, as well as urban communities.”

Lance GeorgeHAC Director of Research and Information

Calling for Housing Equity on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

January 16, 2022/in Announcements Housing Affordability, Vulnerable Populations

Our homes affect every facet of our lives, including our wealth, health, and education. That’s why freedom from housing discrimination is a central pillar of the Civil Rights Movement’s vision for a more just, equitable, and free America. All people deserve a safe, healthy, and affordable home. Yet, for hundreds of years, the United States has not included all its communities in the full promise of a place to call home.

Many of those communities are rural. Across the country, the deepest, most persistent poverty is largely in rural areas. And among those places, Rural Black communities are vastly overrepresented. It is why small towns like Grenada, Mississippi; Selma, Alabama; and Midway, Georgia played such big roles in the Civil Rights Movement.

Today, as we honor the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., let us be even more dedicated to combatting inequity in all its forms. Achieving the dream of a nation in which everyone has a safe, healthy, and affordable place to call home will take significant, sustained investments in combatting racial and geographic inequity.

The Castro Family's Self-Help Housing Story

Self-Help Homeownership: What it means to Families

January 6, 2022/in Impact, Lending, Our Work, Success Stories Homeowner Housing, Housing Affordability, Self-Help Housing

We are proud of the families we’ve helped achieve the dream of homeownership. This series highlights the incredible impact we’ve made thanks to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program. Homeownership changes lives—it can be a gateway to financial stability and better quality of life. The four families featured here all know the difference a home can make. Congratulations to all of them for the extraordinary achievement of building a home!

The Castro Family

With the help of People’s Self-Help Housing, the Castro family built their own home in King City, California. This is their new home:

Ben Phelps

Ben Phelps built his new home in Heber, Utah, thanks to support from Self-Help Homes of Utah. Here’s how his new home has made a difference in his life:

The Root Family

Self-Help Homes of Utah also helped the Root family build their own home in Heber, Utah. Here’s what their home means to them:

The Smith Family

With the help of People’s Self-Help Housing, the Smith family built their own home in Boone County, Arkansas. This is their new home:

Over the last 25 years, the Housing Assistance Council has financed the construction of over 10,000 new self-help homes. Under the self-help model, homeowners help build their homes, contributing “sweat equity” instead of a traditional down payment.

COVID in Rural America in 5 Charts

December 23, 2021/in Coronavirus In Rural America, Infographics, Mapping Coronavirus in Rural America, News Housing Affordability, Rental Housing

The pandemic continues to impact rural America. The slides below provide data on the progression of the pandemic since February 2020 and offer an overview of cases and death rates.

HAC’s Research featured on Marketplace Morning Report

December 20, 2021/in HAC in the News, News Housing Affordability, Rental Housing

Lance George, HAC’s Director of Research and Information, contributed his expertise to a segment on the Marketplace Morning Report. For unincorporated communities, limited ways to regulate housing examines the challenges high amenity communities like Joshua Tree, California have with rental housing affordability. Lance offered a national perspective on factors that contribute to these challenges.

Achieving a Vision of a Prosperous Rural America

December 16, 2021/in Impact, Rural Recap Housing Affordability

I love the National Rural Housing Conference because it never fails to inspire me. This year was no different. Over three days, we reconnected as an industry, learned together, and began to work through some of the most challenging questions facing our communities. Thank you for being a part of this extraordinary conference.

We can only achieve an ambitious vision by working together.

This year was our 20^th biennial conference and celebrated HAC’s 50^th Anniversary. With such big round numbers, we launched a Vision 2071 campaign to guide the work of rural housing over the next 50 years. HAC started the conversation with a vision for everyone in Rural America to have a safe, decent, and affordable place to call home and strive for a Rural America where people feel connected to their communities.

We are inviting everyone to help form the vision and help put it into action. HAC is committed to expanding our work and raising funds to support more rural housing providers, but we can’t do it alone. We can only achieve an ambitious vision by working together.

We would love to count you as a supporter of our work. Please consider contributing to the work at www.vision2071.org and include HAC in your end-of-year giving. You can donate here or by contacting jennifer@ruralhome.org. Together, we can make this vision of rural America a reality by 2071.

While the Conference and Vision 2071 have us looking to the future, I don’t want to forget to celebrate the wins of our recent past. 2021 was one heck of a year. I am proud that the HAC community leveraged over $14 million in HAC loan funds to build and maintain 720 affordable rural homes. Plus, more than 50 housing organizations recognized a need in their communities and came to HAC for technical assistance to address that need. I can’t wait to see what we can accomplish together in 2022.

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Creating the New Normal: COVID-19 leaves its mark on Rural America Cover

Rural Voices: COVID-19 leaves its mark on Rural America

November 5, 2021/in Coronavirus, Coronavirus In Rural America, Rural Voices Coronavirus, Disaster, Housing Affordability

Over the past a year and a half, the coronavirus pandemic has profoundly reshaped the world. COVID-19 has killed well over 4.5 million people across the globe, including approximately 96,600 in rural America. It closed down large segments of the economies of nearly every country, including the United States. It changed the way our children attended school. It deepened our political disagreements. And it altered our housing markets, the ways we work, and the needs of the low-income rural people we serve.

This issue of Rural Voices looks at some of the pandemic’s impacts on affordable rural housing efforts in the U.S. It also examines ways these impacts may be turning into lasting changes – a “new normal.”

VIEW FROM WASHINGTON

Listening and Learning to Better Serve Rural Communities
by Steven K. Washington

HUD offers flexibility to help rural nonprofits weather the pandemic.

FEATURES

Rural Housing Efforts Continued Through Closures, Natural Disasters, and Financial Challenges

Four rural housing leaders describe how the pandemic changed the ways their organizations work.

Resilient in the Desert: Self-Help Housing Blooms in Arizona Despite the Pandemic
by Thomas Ryan

Housing America Corporation and its self-help housing program faced a series of challenges but adapted to a new normal.

Study Reveals Pandemic’s Impact on Oregon Farmworkers
by Jennifer Martinez-Medina

Survey results describe the pandemic’s threats to farmworkers’ family finances, housing conditions, and both physical and mental health. Community-based housing and rental aid programs have provided some relief.

Wisconsin Works to House Rural Residents and Eradicate Homelessness
by Carrie Poser and Michael Basford

The pandemic has exacerbated the homelessness situation, but federal aid helps.

Keeping Rural Renters Housed During the Pandemic
by Victoria Bourret, Daniel Threet, And Rebecca Yae

NLIHC presents best practices for ensuring rural tenants receive emergency rental assistance.

New Faces at HAC

We welcomed several new HACsters to the team this year. Their work will improve our ability to serve more rural Americans and bolster HAC’s efforts to support affordable housing in rural communities.

INFOGRAPHIC

Rural Voices would like to hear what you have to say about one, or all, of these issues. Please comment on these stories by sending a tweet to #RuralVoices, discuss on the Rural Affordable Housing Group on LinkedIn, or on our Facebook page.

Rory Doyle/ There is More Work to be Done

Historic Housing & Capacity Building Investments in Build Back Better Framework

October 28, 2021/in Advocacy, Policy Federal Funding, Housing Affordability

Statement from HAC’s CEO

This is a moment housing advocates have been waiting for. Today, President Biden announced a Build Back Better framework that would make robust investments in affordable housing and capacity across the country. This historic investment would drive prosperity and equity for small towns and rural places.

Rural communities hold vast potential to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life for all Americans. Access to quality, affordable housing is key to jumpstarting that potential. Building and preserving homes creates jobs, improves education and health outcomes, and provides much-needed financial and physical stability to low-income families.

The framework includes a $150 billion investment in affordable housing nationwide, which would build more than a million new affordable homes, expand rental assistance, and help families afford down payments. It would also establish a new Rural Partnership Program, empowering rural communities (including Tribal Nations) with capacity building resources.

Everyone deserves a safe, decent, and affordable place to call home. The Build Back Better framework would bring our country much, much closer to achieving that vision.

David Lipsetz

CEO, Housing Assistance Council

Solar panels covering parking spaces at Calistoga Family Apartments

Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture

https://flic.kr/p/CpXy7x The U.S. Department of Agriculture

“Worst Case” Rental Housing Needs Changed Little from 2017 to 2019

October 5, 2021/in Announcements, News Housing Affordability, Housing Problems, Rental Housing

Only 62 affordable rental units were available for every 100 very low-income renters in 2019, according to Worst Case Housing Needs: 2021 Report to Congress, released on October 5 by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). While data on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and economic recession that began in 2020 is not yet available, the report notes that they pose a “great risk of widespread housing problems.”

Households with worst case needs are defined as renters with very low incomes (at or below 50 percent of area median income) who do not receive government housing assistance and pay more than half their income for rent, live in severely inadequate conditions, or both. Cost burden – the mismatch between income and housing costs – is by far the most significant housing problem in all geographic areas. Inadequate housing quality caused only 3 percent of worst case needs nationwide.

In 2019 there were 7.77 million renter households with worst case needs in the U.S., 42.2 percent of all very low-income renters. This represents an improvement from the record high of 8.5 million (44 percent) in 2011 but it remains above the rate during the years preceding the 2007-2009 recession.

Almost three-quarters (74 percent) of worst case renters in 2019 had extremely low incomes (at or below 30 percent of area median), the highest proportion since 2005. Worst case needs were highest among American Indian or Alaskan Native households at 55 percent; 53 percent among Asian households, 45 percent among Hispanic households, 44 percent among non-Hispanic White households, and 36 percent among non-Hispanic Black households and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander households.

Worst case needs declined in the Midwest, Northeast, and South from 2017 to 2019, but those improvements were offset by an increase in worst case needs in the West.

Registration for Virtual National Rural Housing Conference Coming Soon

September 17, 2021/in Announcements, National Rural Housing Conference, News Housing Affordability, Housing Occupancy

A Message from HAC’s President & CEO

We’ve had a remarkable year here at the Housing Assistance Council and look forward to finishing the year in that same fashion with HAC’s National Rural Housing Conference, scheduled to take place virtually on November 30 – December 3, 2021. This year’s virtual format will allow us all to reconnect and gather safely, regardless of location. With an exciting and full schedule of workshops and new virtual gathering spaces, the Conference will offer attendees a premier opportunity to learn from experts and connect with the entire affordable housing industry.

We will host more than 30 workshops and stakeholder convenings—covering topics including best practices for rural housing and community development, resource development, organizational management, and creative placemaking. This conference offers an excellent opportunity to connect with federal agencies, national housing organizations, and on-the-ground practitioners from across rural America. For many, this conference represents the year’s only opportunity to connect directly with federal policymakers, program experts, friends around the affordable housing industry and others who share their interests in a thriving rural America.

Registration opens soon. Be on the lookout for our announcement so you can reserve your place as we gather for HAC’s 2021 National Rural Housing Conference. We look forward to connecting with you this December!

Warm Regards,

David Lipsetz
President & CEO