Our Policy Lens on Rural America

Rural communities contain approximately 20% of the country’s population, and many are struggling due to job loss, limited access to financial services, substandard housing stock, and a lack of infrastructure investment. These factors hinder the growth of rural places and contribute to population loss, higher poverty rates, and basic capacity needs. The challenges are greatest in our nation’s most rural and isolated areas, which are disproportionately persistent-poverty counties.

We need a national commitment to support rural America’s people and communities. When equipped with the right support, rural places offer a wealth of opportunities including less expensive land, high rates of homeownership, and a strong sense of community. LISC, through our Rural LISC program, is active in over 2,400 rural counties throughout all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the U.S Virgin Islands, and Guam. This impact is achieved through Rural LISC’s focus areas, which include access to capital, broadband and infrastructure, workforce and financial prosperity, housing, and locally led disaster recovery.

We cannot fulfill our commitment to rural communities without strong alignment with federal policies and programs that support our investments in housing, economic development, family income and wealth building, health, and the capacity-building needs of nonprofit organizations. As part of LISC’s comprehensive set of policy priorities that we intend to promote with members of Congress and the Administration in the coming months and years, below are highlights of several policies and programs that we believe will be critical to supporting our work in rural America.

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Persistent Poverty

Communities suffering from persistent poverty face some of our nation’s steepest challenges, yet they find it difficult to apply for and receive federal resources due to capacity constraints. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines persistent poverty at the county level as counties where at least 20% of the population has been living in poverty for the past 30 years. There are approximately 353 persistently poor counties, more than 300 of which are in nonmetropolitan areas.

Legislative proposals have been introduced in Congress to establish “10-20-30” policies, which would direct that a minimum of 10% of federal funds for specific affordable housing, community development, and infrastructure programs go to communities in which the poverty level has been at least 20% for the last 30 years. LISC supports efforts to increase the ability of persistent-poverty communities to receive federal resources, and we believe these efforts work best when the programs also receive commensurate increases in funding.

LISC also supports efforts to eliminate federal matching-fund requirements for persistently poor rural communities since these places have less ability to secure such local resources, which prevents them from accessing needed federal resources. Eliminating match requirements will help support the comprehensive community development efforts needed to revitalize and support small towns.

Capacity Building

Nonprofit housing organizations and community development corporations (CDCs) play an essential role in supporting low-income families in rural communities. These groups develop and own affordable housing and provide services that further housing stability and financial opportunity for residents. CDCs in rural areas face unique constraints—most notably limited public and private resources to support their work and much larger service areas than those in urban areas—which can limit their capacity to meet needs.

LISC supports increased investments in capacity-building and technical-assistance programs to support community-based housing and community development organizations, including:

  • The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Section 4 Capacity Building Program, which provides grants to national nonprofit organizations to provide training, education, financial support, and development assistance to community-based CDCs and housing organizations in rural and urban communities. LISC supports carve-outs within the program that focus on rural and Native communities.
  • HUD’s Distressed Cities Technical Assistance program, which provides assistance to small local and Tribal governments addressing affordable housing, economic development, fiscal management, or disaster recovery challenges.
  • The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Community Development Initiative, which provides grants to help nonprofit housing and community development organizations, low-income rural communities, and federally recognized Tribes support housing, community facilities, and community and economic development projects in rural areas.
  • USDA’s Rural Partners Network, which helps rural communities access government resources and funding to create jobs, build infrastructure, and support long-term economic stability.

“We cannot fulfill our commitment to rural communities without strong alignment with federal policies and programs that support our investments.”

Community Safety

Many communities throughout the United States struggle to develop solutions to safety problems, including violence and victimization. This struggle can be especially pronounced in rural areas, small towns, and Tribal areas, where vast distances and lack of resources and specialized expertise all work against comprehensive solutions. For more than four decades, LISC has worked in many of these communities to improve quality of life and local partner capacity. To this end, LISC supports:

Robust funding of the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative (RVCRI). RVCRI is an effort funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance account, that provides funding and assistance to rural law enforcement agencies seeking to reduce violent crime and address problems associated with violent crime. Law enforcement agencies and community partners funded through this program receive support to implement violent crime reduction strategies, improve investigations, improve services to victims, and enhance collaboration among local stakeholders.

Building the capacity of rural partners to be competitive for violence prevention and reduction funding opportunities. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act established funding for community violence intervention and prevention initiative (CVIPI) programs. LISC supports robust funding for CVIPI, and encourages the federal government to continue to provide grant funding, training, and technical assistance to local communities that need to strengthen their ability to deploy CVIPI approaches.

Economic Development

Rural communities offer extraordinary talent, businesses, and assets to our local and national economies. Yet rural areas are often shortchanged in the private and federal investments needed to meaningfully broaden pathways to opportunity. The distinctive challenges of rural communities require robust federal investments that better support local economic development, innovation, and infrastructure improvements.

LISC encourages the following federal actions:

  • Increase funding for HUD’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program and streamline the CDBG Disaster Recovery program, enabling communities to address locally identified development needs and recover quickly from disasters.
  • Increase funding for the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Program and make the New Markets Tax Credit permanent. Both of these programs target significant resources to persistently poor and nonmetropolitan communities.
  • Improve the USDA Community Facilities Relending Program—which provides capital to CDFIs and other lenders to make loans to develop community facilities in rural communities. We support efforts to work with USDA on streamlining the program to produce additional impacts.
  • Support vibrant small businesses and thriving commercial corridors in communities of all sizes and geographies, including enactment of the Capacity Building for Business Districts Pilot Program, which would bolster the work of local organizations that support small businesses and the revitalization of main streets in small towns.
  • Ensure the National Telecommunications and Information Administration continues to implement historic federal broadband infrastructure resources throughout rural and Native American communities. This includes connecting households to affordable broadband internet service, computer devices, and digital skills training.
  • Expand access to quality small business financing, including by partnering with CDFIs in designing and implementing federal small business financing initiatives and promoting responsible innovation in the small business financing market. These efforts are critical for rural entrepreneurs who face unique challenges to accessing quality, affordable capital products.

Income and Wealth Building

Healthy, vibrant communities are made up of people who have living-wage jobs and feel confident about their economic futures. Poverty occurs at higher rates in rural America generally, and in 2018 rural communities accounted for all of the extreme poverty counties across the nation. Rural communities also tend to be hardest hit during economic downturns.

We must expand our investments in the people who live, work, and raise families in rural areas. In particular LISC urges these steps:

Invest in a strong and resilient workforce. LISC supports reauthorizing the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) to continue and strengthen federal workforce programs, with a focus on promoting integrated career training and supportive services that are proven to be successful in building long-term financial stability and economic growth. LISC also supports efforts to target resources to community-based organizations that are best positioned to address locally specific financial and skills-building needs. Finally, LISC supports efforts like the Digital Skills for Today’s Workforce Act that will ensure that people in all communities can fully participate in the modern economy—particularly those in rural areas who face unique barriers to accessing internet services and digital skills training

Empower people to achieve financial independence. Given the high rates of poverty in rural areas, it is critical to target resources to rural communities that enable people to build financial resilience and pursue long-term goals. This includes expanding access to financial coaching services and preserving and strengthening income supports that protect people’s financial security.

Health

The health of residents in rural communities is heavily influenced by economic and geographic obstacles, including infrastructure limitations, lack of access to essential services, and remote isolation. As a result, people in rural areas experience higher rates of chronic conditions and disability than urban communities. Additionally, it can be harder to access health care in rural communities, given a shortage of facilities, a lack of transportation options, and difficulties filling health care positions. Fortunately, there are steps that the federal government can take to incentivize and leverage the resources and expertise of other sectors to improve rural health outcomes.

LISC supports the following steps to support rural health:

  • Provide incentives for the medical system to finance activities that address health-related social needs, including through Medicaid funding streams and nonprofit hospitals’ Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs).
  • Fund efforts to link health and social service network infrastructures to better facilitate service coordination and referral management among health care providers, community organizations, and federally funded programs for vulnerable and homebound individuals.
  • Increase investments in Community Health Centers (CHCs). One in five rural residents rely on CHCs for comprehensive, affordable, high-quality primary care. CHCs serve 10 million rural patients at 6,500 locations in rural and frontier communities across the nation, and these rural centers represent 41% of all CHCs.

Housing

Rural communities exhibit a very particular set of single-family and rental housing characteristics, with higher rates of homeownership and more families owning their property free and clear. But rural areas also have higher rates of substandard housing, shortages of affordable rental housing, higher prevalence of manufactured housing, and lower household incomes. Low incomes make it challenging for homeowners to maintain their homes and for renters to afford those units, often limited in number, that may be available.

LISC supports the following actions advancing rural housing:

  • Increase federal funding for USDA’s single-family and rental housing programs, along with other federal housing assistance programs, which support the production and preservation of housing in rural communities. In addition, provide USDA additional rental housing preservation authorities so more of its multifamily financed properties remain affordable.
  • Strengthen the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) through the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act, which has numerous provisions specifically focused on increasing LIHTC investments in rural and Native communities.
  • Protect Duty-to-Serve mandates for government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), which require them to serve underserved markets, including rural communities.
  • Enact the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, which would create a tax credit to support the development and rehabilitation of single-family homes in disinvested rural communities.
  • Enact legislation to scale assistance with heirs’ property challenges, which are overrepresented in rural communities.
  • Increase protections and opportunities in manufactured housing. Over half of the 17 million manufactured homes in the Unites States are located in rural communities.