News from HUD User

The Winter 2026 issue of Evidence Matters: Transforming Knowledge into Housing and Community Development Policy, which focuses on rural housing, is now available. This issue provides an overview of rural housing conditions and challenges, discusses the variety of definitions of “rural” and their implications for research and policy, and highlights state programs that address housing barriers in rural areas.

Key findings:

• Rural areas face a variety of housing challenges including those that are unique to their context, such as the costs associated with construction in remote areas, those that are more prevalent there, such as physical inadequacy, those that are similar to challenges in other areas but are experienced differently, such as homelessness, and those that are similar to other areas but that have causes specific to rural areas, such as housing cost burdens.

• To address these challenges, several federal programs, many of them administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, provide support to rural renters and homeowners.

• Federal agencies use a variety of definitions of the term “rural,” which affects whether households meet classification standards to qualify for particular programs.

• Many rural would-be homebuyers struggle to obtain mortgages, and the scarcity of small-dollar loans is especially challenging.

• North Dakota, South Carolina, and Kansas have implemented initiatives that combine state and private-sector funding to strengthen housing development and increase homeownership in rural areas. The state programs offer construction loans and grants for housing projects, as well as downpayment assistance for homebuyers in economically distressed communities.