Print pageRural Snapshot of the NeighborWorks Network
Rural communities across America face unique challenges as they strive to create affordable homeownership and rental opportunities and strengthen their communities. Of the nearly 250 NeighborWorks network affiliates that focus on attainable housing and community development, over 50% focus their work in rural communities. More than 80% of NeighborWorks network organizations serve rural in some way.
Over 80 community development financial institutions (CDFIs) serve our rural organizations, lending over $622 Million in fiscal years 23-25 alone. In this same time period, our network created nearly 17,000 new homeowners, counseled and educated nearly 44,000 new customers, and developed over 32,000 new units of housing in rural communities.
Rural Initiative Program Supports
NeighborWorks America's Rural Initiative is a national program integrated across all of our corporate lines of business, promoting, supporting, and enhancing comprehensive community development through a mix of affordable housing, economic development, and other locally determined strategies that strengthen and revitalize rural communities. NeighborWorks' Rural Initiative is dedicated to creating vibrant rural communities by delivering a range of capacity-building supports, including capital, flexible, and individualized technical assistance, grantmaking, peer-to-peer collaboratives, and external partnership connections.
Manufactured Housing
Historically, manufactured housing has represented the most naturally occurring attainable housing across rural America. NeighborWorks America has been a leading voice in this work at the national nonprofit level for over two decades. We support our network in exploring innovative housing types. Manufactured housing is one type of modern, factory-built housing that represents a potential untapped, affordable-housing solution in communities across the country.
NeighborWorks America and Next Step, Inc. partnered together to develop "Manufactured Housing: A Resource for Engaging Nonprofit Boards and Community Stakeholders" to address this challenge and help organizations advance manufactured housing programs. We also developed two PowerPoint presentations that can help you talk about manufactured housing and its benefits to different audiences.
- Download the community planning and council boards presentation guide.
- Download the nonprofit boards presentation guide.
If you are still learning about manufactured housing and laying the foundation for introducing the idea to your organization, download Manufactured Housing: Blueprint for Affordability and Community Impact, which can serve as a primer for nearly all topics related to the use of manufactured housing as an affordable housing tool.
In addition to webinars and technical assistance cohorts to support organizations in learning and developing manufactured housing, we make it possible for organizations to travel to factories to see the work first hand, speaking to industry leaders who help them understand the opportunities and challenges of how this could be a potential solution for their localized work.
Factory-Built Housing
In order to meet the evolving needs of the entire network across urban, suburban, and rural geographies over the past 10 years, we have expanded our support to include many alternative construction strategies, whether it's manufactured housing, modular, mass timber, or Structured Insulated Panel Systems, that are different proportions of factory-built and site-assembled.
Especially popular in our urban and suburban markets, modular housing often provides the streamlined approvals, financing, appraisals, and designs for infill development projects. Our network of developers uses modular companies of different scales, whether small and local, medium and regional, or large, national-level companies that have constructed factory-built housing for decades.
Look for more informaion as we continue to build out this webpage with additional resources that explore different innovative housing types.
What We Provide to Our Network
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Where to Find Help
If you are looking for help with rural home repairs or are having difficulty making your mortgage payments:
- Reach out to the nearest NeighborWorks organization in our rural directory or go to FindaForeclosureCounselor.org.
- Call the nearest USDA Rural Development area office and ask for a housing specialist.
- Contact a Community Action Agency in your area.
- Check in with your state Housing Finance Agency.
