Rural Housing

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USDA’s Section 515 Rural Rental Housing program has produced more than half a million homes for low income families since its start in 1963. These communities are now facing the same pressures their more urban counterparts have over the last decade: aging facilities and owners who want to prepay their mortgages and convert the housing to market rate, displacing current residents. In recent years, many units produced under the Section 515  program have been lost  from the housing stock through prepayment of their loans and conversion to market rate housing. Preserving rural rental housing has become more and more urgent.

Legislation and Policies

• Rural Multifamily Initiatives by State. This summary chart is part of NHT's effort to identify state housing finance agencies that have incorporated incentives for rural housing in their low income housing tax credit Qualified Allocation Plan (Updated June 23, 2006).
• 2006 HFA Preservation Roundtable Executive Summary focusing on rural affordable housing preservation. In May 2006, the National Housing Trust held its third annual roundtable discussion on preservation at the National Council of State Housing Agencies Spring Training. This year's focus was rural preservation issues and was held in partnership with the Housing Assistance Council. More than 30 representatives from 16 state housing finance agencies gathered in Indianapolis to confront the challenges they face and share their successes in preserving existing affordable rural rental housing.
• Rural Housing Services' Multi-Family Preservation and Revitalization Restructuring Demonstration Program (MPR). This program is expected to preserve 5,400 affordable apartments by allowing Section 515 property owners to restructure existing debt.  Owners will use the money saved through restructuring to revitalize their properties.  

Articles and Publications

• Preserving and Improving Rural Rental Housing: Promising Efforts Emerge. This article examines a number of promising rural preservation efforts by nonprofit organizations across the country (Rural Voices, Winter 2004-2005).

Case Studies in Rural Preservation

• Clover Patch Apartments. Despite challenges, affordable rural housing is being preserved. Clover Patch Apartments in St. Charles, Minnesota, a Section 515 property saved from market-rate conversion, is a case in point.

Additional Resources

• Housing Assistance Council website