The Rural Homeless Initiative acknowledges the problem of rural homelessness and advocates for an appropriation of funding within the Farm Bill to provide resources empowering rural communities to fight this silent epidemic.

Problem:

Rural homelessness is a silent epidemic afflicting thousands of individuals and families every year. Unique economic, sociological and geographical factors contribute to the causes of rural homelessness, and without outside help the ranks of the rural homeless will continue to grow. As it stands now, their plight is an overwhelming task to address. Most of the individuals and families suffering displacement are forced to migrate to the cities to seek assistance. Such forced migration and the subsequent geographical alienation leads to further family disruption. Thereafter, families often follow a downward spiral of dysfunction, strangled by the lack of outside financial and relationship support. Research has consistently shown that homeless individuals and families are most effectively served by resources and networks in their originating, home communities. The Rural Homeless Initiative seeks to empower rural communities with small, appropriately scaled prevention and emergency assistance programs that will quickly address crises and restore people back into a stable home environment.

Many factors are at play in making rural areas more vulnerable to homelessness than their urban counterparts:

• Unemployment is greater in most rural areas, compared to their urban counterparts.
• The measured rate of poverty is significantly higher in rural areas than in urban areas.
• In contrast to urban areas, rural areas have lower educational levels in working adults.
• In rural areas, lower wages are often not offset by a lower cost of living, which puts tremendous economic pressures on families.
• Rural service areas are geographically much larger than urban service areas. This presents unique and significant barriers in providing and coordinating services.
• Most rural areas have no public transportation.
• Rural economies survive on one or two forms of industry. For example, in the San Luis Valley, the economy is based primarily on agriculture and tourism. During a drought year, there are no other forms of industry to pick up the loss. Urban areas have diverse economies and have more job options for displaced / homeless people.
• The increasing cost of housing and utilities has far out-paced the growth in wages, forcing the working poor in rural communities to pay a high percentage of their income for housing. This leaves little or no resources available to assist when crisis hits the household.
• Rural areas have limited services for people to turn to in times of crises; For example, La Puente is the only shelter within 120 miles. Many rural communities have no shelter at all.
• Rural areas are isolated from urban resources, making it difficult to secure effective services. This isolation makes it expensive and time consuming for rural advocates to fully engage in funding and political circles.

When those who unfortunately become homeless can not find the help they need, they are forced to migrate to the cities. This often is not in their best interest or the communities to which they migrate.

Most rural shelters, such as La Puente, struggle to keep their doors open. Poor rural communities are often in no position to fully fund a 24 hour / 7 day a week facility. For funding, rural programs rely on churches, individuals and foundations. With meager resources, and dependency on volunteers, rural programs have difficulty remaining self-sustaining.

Current government funding initiatives for rural homeless programs does not touch the need.

Most McKinney Act programs are geared to urban homeless issues and the urban style of service delivery. HUD has struggled to be an effective service provider in rural areas. HUD is not designed to be an effective leader or program developer to address rural housing issues and rural homeless issues.
HUD issues with rural programs:

HUD has no programs designed specifically for rural homeless issues.
Existing HUD program design ignores rural realities.
HUD's Continuum of Care process is designed for large urban centers.
Poor rural programs have to commute long distances to maintain any voice in decision making processes. By design, we are shut out of the process.
HUD staff are challenged to visit the wide rural landscape to learn about regional issues.
Urban programs have comparatively rich administrative and lobbying resources and gain understandable advantage by their proximity to HUD staff and resources.
Poor rural programs do not have the administrative structure to stay on top of all the complex reporting and regulatory burden of HUD's multifarious programs.

The result is that underserved rural homeless migrate to the resource-rich cities to get services. To its credit, HUD has tried to initiate a Rural Homeless Initiative back in the early 90s, but funding was never appropriated.

Recommendation: Work with USDA Rural Housing (Under the Department of Agriculture) to expand their charter of housing programs to include a pilot grant program for rural homeless projects.

• Grants would work within USDA Rural Housings existing definition of rural.  Grants would be up to $50,000 to support shelter operations, homeless prevention activities, and essential services to the homeless. Priority would be to serve individuals and families whose homelessness originates from the host community.
• Grants could also provide communities without shelters with resources to assist displaced individuals and families.
• Funding to USDA must also include resources for outreach and marketing for the program as well as technical assistance (case management, tracking, financial administration) to new programs.
• Homeless programs are already part of USDA Rural Developments charter. A grant program expands the existing charter and gives USDA a stronger mission with the lower end of the housing continuum.
• A rural grants program could be easily modeled after HUD's Emergency Shelter Program (ESG), a wide-ranging, flexible grant that affords basic operational costs. ESG is the most effective HUD program for rural areas, but urban areas continue to swallow the lion's share of allocated monies.
• A USDA Rural Homeless initiative could be test driven as a pilot program, using some resources re-allocated from USDA programs that have difficulty spending themselves fully dry. The re-allocations could be determined regionally.
• USDA Rural Housing have staff in most rural communities. They live and work here and know the regional issues. They hold us accountable day to day. We do not have to commute to visit with them.
• USDA Rural Housing is the government's rural housing division. It has been very effective in meeting existing and emergent rural housing needs, e.g., self-help housing, migrant housing.
• USDA Rural Housing has one existing rural homeless program already: a one dollar purchase of a foreclosed USDA home to be used by homeless service providers.

The Rural Homeless Initiative best suited to be administered under USDA's Rural Development program. The initiative should be incorporated into the new and up-coming Farm Bill. Please write your senator and representative urging them to craft the Rural Homeless Initiative into the up-coming farm bill.