Housing Assistance Council

05/18/2026

Did you know the National Rural Housing Conference was created by the Rural Housing Alliance in 1969, with the Housing Assistance Council taking the lead on the conference in 1974? In this photo, housing leaders gather for the National Rural Housing Conference, date and location unknown.

05/15/2026

For this week's Loan Fund Friday, we're looking at the completed Orosi subdivision in Tulare County, California—where HAC's SHOP loan helped make homeownership possible for 21 hardworking families.

A $315,000 loan allowed Self-Help Enterprises to develop essential infrastructure for this mutual self-help housing community. On their part, the families contributed significant sweat equity—working together to build their own homes, with each household providing at least 1,400 hours of labor under skilled supervision.

Today, all 21 homes are complete and occupied, and the loan has been fully repaid. The homes range from 1,264 to 1,480 square feet with 3-4 bedrooms, offering energy-efficient amenities that meet CalGreen standards. The project provided affordable homeownership opportunities to families earning below 80% of the area median income, in a region where 22% of residents live below the federal poverty line and many low-income households spend more than half of their income on housing.

We're honored to support Self-Help Enterprises' mission to build stronger, more resilient communities across California's San Joaquin Valley.

05/14/2026

At the 2025 National Rural Housing Conference, HAC conducted a session that explained how community development lenders underwrite affordable housing loans—from key assumptions, to fee structures, collateral, and stress testing. The discussion also focused on how lenders balance mission goals with risk management, and offered actionable guidance for rural nonprofits preparing applications.

05/14/2026

-House proposes changes to Senate's housing bill but keeps rural housing reform
-HUD previews Continuum of Care changes
-Community Connect broadband funds available
-HUD opens Sec. 811’s Project Rental Assistance
-FEMA report recommends increasing state and local responsibility

And more in this edition of HAC News: https://loom.ly/COScSNY

05/13/2026

HAC is exhibiting during this year's National Council of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA) Housing Credit Connect in St. Louis, June 2–5! Please come see us at booth 404 in the Marketplace to learn more about HAC and how we support affordable housing efforts throughout rural America! Learn more about at: https://loom.ly/awQw0Bw

05/12/2026

NeighborWorks Umpqua, based in Roseburg, Oregon, is a long-standing housing organization with services spanning real estate development, property management, resident services, and financial coaching. When the organization began expanding into new lines of work such as climate resiliency, there was a lack of transparency between departments, limiting coordination and making it difficult to align these new lines of work with existing organizational systems.

HAC stepped in with a technical assistance plan to help NeighborWorks Umpqua rebuild its operational capacity. With help from HAC Housing Specialist Shreya Shrestha and the rest of HAC's technical assistance team, NeighborWorks Umpqua was able to streamline its processes and break down information silos. Read the full story on HAC's website: https://loom.ly/jJFLTP8

05/11/2026

The Heirs' Property forum at last year's National Rural Housing conference revealed that heirs’ property can lead to multidimensional, intergenerational, socio-economic, cultural, and infrastructural challenges. The latest article on Heirs' Property Central aims to highlight cross-cutting themes of the forum panels, which include understanding heirs' property, supporting heirs' property owners, and what the field of heirs' property needs to induce lasting change. Read the full article: https://loom.ly/MOEpoLc

05/08/2026

For this week's Loan Fund Friday, we are taking a look at Diamond Village Apartments, a project by Kingdom Development, Inc. and the SNO Foundation.

Diamond Village Apartments is an 81-unit affordable rental project in Diamond Springs California. Diamond Springs is a rural town within the Sacramento metro area with a population of 11,345, which is a significant increase over the past 20 years when the population was just 4,888 in 2000. Because of this increase, the demand for affordable housing has also gone up. Renters in El Dorado County need to earn 2.1 times the state minimum wage to afford the average monthly market rate rent of $1,644, and the rural portions of the county need to produce more than 2,000 affordable units to meet the requirements of its Regional Housing Needs Allocation and meet ‘fair share’ production goals set by the state.

HAC was able to work with Kingdom Development and SNO to fund the Diamond Village Apartments. By issuing a working capital loan, the borrowers were able to start the construction process in late 2022. By 2024, the entire project was complete, and now there are 81 new units of critically needed affordable housing for people earning 40, 50, and 60% of the area median income.

05/07/2026

The White House released its budget for fiscal year 2027 in early April. In her article for Shelterforce, HAC Government Relations Manager Samantha Booth breaks down how the proposal would affect rural housing programs at HUD and USDA: where funding levels have improved, where funding levels have stayed the same, and where there is still great concern over cuts to essential resources in rural America. Read the full article at Shelterforce: https://loom.ly/DCYPGws

The proposed FY 2027 budget shows improvements from last year, but still fails to provide the support needed for rural areas to thrive.

05/06/2026

Preservation of the existing multifamily housing stock is critical to increasing overall supply in America. HUD oversees more than 22,000 privately owned multifamily properties and more than 1.4 million assisted housing units across the country, yet housing subsidy contracts are expiring on thousands of these privately owned multifamily properties with federally insured mortgages, and physical repairs to the properties are overdue. HAC supports preserving HUD multifamily properties and expanding access to Housing Choice Vouchers. Read HAC's 2026 policy priorities: https://loom.ly/2aR056o

05/04/2026

Today we are recognizing Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (LiKEN Knowledge), a non-profit organization established in 2015 with a main office located in Wi******er, Kentucky. Its mission is to nurture locally based livelihoods, build trustworthy cross-sectoral collaborations, and catalyze the coproduction of knowledge. Read LiKEN's full profile on Heirs' Property Central, including their Appalachian Heirs’ Property Center (AHPC) program, a free legal and land-use technical assistance program for people who own heirs’ property in eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia: https://loom.ly/WKVsjW8