USDA Rural Housing Service

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Housing Service (RHS) has numerous programs available to help in the development of rural America. The programs offered by the RHS are listed below:

• Community Facilities Loans: These loans help construct or improve facilities providing essential services in rural areas or towns with a population of less than 50,000. Funds are available to public entities such as municipalities, counties, native American tribes, and non-profit organizations.
• Home Ownership Loans: Low-income and moderate-income rural residents qualify for these loans, which enable them to purchase, construct, or repair a dwelling.
• Rural Rental Housing Loans: Individuals or organizations building or rehabilitating rental units for low-income and moderate-income residents in rural areas may qualify for these loans.
• Rental Assistance: These sums are provided to reduce out-of-pocket cash that very low-income and low-income families pay for rent, including utilities.
• Home Improvement and Repair Loans and Grants: These loans enable very low-income rural homeowners to remove health and safety hazards in their homes and to make homes accessible for people with disabilities. Grants are available for people 62 years old or older who cannot afford to repay a loan.
• Self-Help Housing Loans: These loans assist groups of six to eight low-income families in helping each other build homes by providing materials, sites, and the skilled labor they cannot furnish. The families must agree to work together until all homes are finished.
• Rural Housing Site Loans: Private or public non-profit organizations may buy adequate building sites for development into a desirable community using these loans.
• Farm Labor Housing Loans and Grants: Farmers, public or private non-profit organizations, and units of state and local governments may build, buy, or repair farm labor housing in either dormitory or multifamily apartment style using these loans.
• Congregate Housing and Group Homes: These homes provide living units for persons with low incomes and moderate incomes and for those 62 years of age or older.
• Housing Preservation Grants: These grants provide qualified public nonprofit organizations and public agencies with grant funds for effective programs to assist very low-income and low-income homeowners repair and rehabilitate their homes in rural areas. They also assist rental property owners and co-ops repair and rehabilitate their units if they agree to make such units available to low-income and very low-income persons.

More information concerning the RHS programs can be found at http://www.Rurdev.USDA.Gov/rhs/index.html.