Rural

Residents who live in manufactured housing communities across the U.S. are under threat of skyrocketing property values, predatory investors, and limited financing options. Can resident-owned communities stem the tide?

In some ways, dealing with the opioid epidemic is a natural fit for community development groups. At the heart, it’s often a problem of poverty: a lack of jobs and opportunities. Here’s how CDCs are using their skills to address the crisis.

Much like urban communities, rural communities also face critical housing issues like rental shortages, a lack of federal and private funding to build new units, and the impending loss of affordability restrictions. Here’s what could help.

Rural communities are very different places—separated by climate, geography, and often race. But in many other ways, these communities are far more similar than different.

Shelterforce has had its comfort zones, and we’ve largely stayed within them. But it was time to shift our thinking so rural areas were more clearly part of the fold.

Targeted investments that address persistent poverty are necessary and should supersede financial support of a border wall.

President Trump’s 2020 budget once again proposes to eliminate, or sharply cut, most rural housing efforts and some other USDA rural programs.

There are distinct differences between natural disaster response and recovery in rural and urban communities. How can community-based organizations better respond to disasters and help rural communities prepare before disaster strikes?

An Alaskan collective’s perspective on taking care of oneself can apply to organizations that work with communities that have experienced trauma. After all, organizations should make the mental and physical health of their staff a top priority, too.

Recently, more than 150 people from across the nation rolled along the backroads of the iconic Mississippi Delta, peering through bus windows at scene after scene of entrenched poverty juxtaposed against occasional pockets of progress that had been achieved against seemingly insurmountable odds. While there were signs of advancement, they were set against the backdrop of conditions that disproportionately plague these places—substandard housing, underperforming schools, inadequate access to quality health care, and limited private and philanthropic investment. 

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson said that housing is “part of the infrastructure of this country” during a March 20 interview with Fox News’ Neal Cavuto. In […]

Its surprising that we must continually fight to make sure that the arts have a role in public schools, and prove that our low-income communities are worthy of arts and culture-related investments.