“ Just another nail in the coffin for rural areas ”: the affordable housing program faces the ax under the Trump tax, budget cuts

A family gift in 2021 of a small land offered a stroke of ownership, but the construction of a house was out of reach for the 45 -year -old single mother and the manicure doing $ 18.50 an hour.

This has changed when she qualified for $ 272,000 as a non -profit organization to build a three -room house due to a subsidy program that has helped make the affordable housing possible in rural areas for decades. She moved in last June.

“Whenever I get into my garage, I pinch myself,” said Collene.

Now, President Donald Trump wishes to eliminate this subsidy, the home investment partnership program and the House Republicans that oversee federal budgetary negotiations have not included computer funding in their budget proposal. Experts and state housing agencies claim that this would recruit tens of thousands of future developments in affordable housing on a national level, in particular injuring the cities of the Appalachians and rural counties where government aid is rare and investors are few.

The program has contributed to building or repairing more than 1.3 million affordable houses in the past three decades, including at least 540,000 in congress districts which are rural or significantly rural, according to an associated analysis of the press of federal data.

“Perhaps they do not realize how far these programs are,” said Collene, who voted for Trump in 2024. Among these half-million houses that the house helped to build, 84% were in the districts that voted for him last year, revealed the AP analysis.

“I understand that we do not want excessive expenses and waste of taxpayers’ dollars,” said Collene, “but these budget cuts offered at all levels make me think back the next time I am in the polls.”

The home program, launched under President George HW Bush in the 1990s, survived years of budgetary battles, but was extended by years of rising construction and stagnant funding costs. This means fewer units, including in certain rural areas where house prices have increased faster than in cities.

The program has spent more than $ 38 billion nationally since it started to fill the financing gaps and attract more investments to acquire, build and repair affordable houses, according to HUD data. Additional funding has been devoted to projects that have not yet been completed and rental assistance.

The future of the house is in political limbo

To take into account the gap left by the proposed cuts, the Républicains de la Chambre want to rely on nearly $ 5 billion in a related pandemic fund which gave states until 2030 to spend projects supporting people who are not without shelter or who are facing roaming.

These $ 5 billion, however, can be much lower, because many projects have not yet been connected to the US housing and urban development department, according to housing agencies and state associations representing them.

A spokesperson for HUD, who administers the program, said the house was not as effective as other programs where money would be better spent.

In opposition to Trump, the Senate Republicans have always included funding for the house in their budget project. In future negotiations, the two chambers can compromise and reduce the financing of the house, or extend the overall budget of recent years.

The White House spokesman Davis Ingle did not answer specific AP questions. Instead, Ingle said Trump’s commitment to cutting administrative formalities makes accommodation more affordable.

A bipartite group of chamber legislators strives to reduce the notorious administrative formalities of the house which, even the supporters, say the construction of construction.

Some rural areas depend more on the house

In the county of Owsley – one of the poorest in the country, located in the rural hills of Kentucky – the residents are fighting in an economy destroyed by the firms of coal mines and the drop in income from tobacco crops.

Affordable houses are necessary, but difficult to build in a region that does not attract more -scale rental developments to which federal dollars generally go.

This is where the house comes into play, said Cassie Hudson, who heads a partnership accommodation in Owsley, who relied on the program to build the majority of its affordable houses for at least a dozen years.

A lack of additional funding for the house has already made it difficult to cover construction costs, said Hudson, and the organization builds a quarter of the unified houses before.

“In particular for deeply rural places and persistent poverty counties, local housing developers are the only way for houses and new rental housing,” said Joshua Stewart de Fahe, a coalition of non -profit organizations of the Appalachians.

This is partly due to the fact that the investment is radical and the steps at home when the construction costs exceed what a house can be sold for – a common barrier in the poor areas of the Appalachians. Some developers use the benefits to build more affordable units. His loss would erode the ability of these non -profit organizations to build affordable houses in the years to come, said Stewart.

One of these non -profit organizations, Housing Development Alliance, helped Tiffany Mullins in Hazard, Kentucky, which was ravaged by floods. Mullins, a single mother of four children who earns $ 14.30 per hour in Walmart, bought a house there thanks to home financing and moved in August.

Mullins considers the program to preserve a rural lifestyle, recalling when people had houses and land “with gardens, we had chickens, cows. Now you don’t see much. ”

It is a long -term impact

In the budgetary negotiations of the congress, the house is an easier target than programs such as good because most people would not immediately lose their accommodation, said Tess Hebree, executive director of the Council of Community Development Agencies.

The effect of any reduction would rather be felt in a new offer of affordable housing. When home financing was temporarily reduced to $ 900 million in 2015, “10 to 15 years later, we see the ramifications,” said Hembree.

This includes affordable units built in cities. The largest program which finances affordable rental housing at the national level, the low -income housing tax credit, uses home subsidies for 12% of units, totaling 324,000 current individual units, according to the research of the Urban Institute which will soon be published.

Trump’s expenditure bill that the Republicans adopted this summer increased the lithc, but experts say that the reduction or reduction of the house would make these credits less usable.

“It’s Lithc Plus Home, generally,” said Tim Thrasher, CEO of Community Action Partnership of North Alabama, who builds affordable apartments for some of the poorest in the country.

In the lush mountains of eastern Virginia-Western, Woodlands Development Group is based on the house for its small rural projects. Because it helps people with a wider range of income, the house is “one of the only programs at our disposal which allows us to develop a real labor accommodation,” said executive director Dave Clark.

They are these workers – nurses, first stakeholders, teachers – that non -profit organizations such as the creative compassion of East Tennessee use the house to build. With the Jeopardy program, the subsidy administrator Sarah Halcott said that she feared that her customers will fight against the increase in housing costs.

“This is only another nail in the coffin for rural areas,” said Halcott.

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Kramon reported to Atlanta. Bedayn reported to Denver. Herbst contributed from New York and Kessler reported to Washington, DC

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Kramon is a member of the body for the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non-profit national services program that places journalists from local editorial rooms to account for undercurrent issues.