The USDA Rural Development offers guaranteed loans to support the growth and development of rural America. From housing families to providing financing to businesses to supporting investments in important community facilities and infrastructures, the USDA’s backing ensures that funding is extended to those who need it.
Let’s take a look at these USDA rural guaranteed loans for individuals, businesses and rural communities. This way to USDA-guaranteed housing loans.
USDA Rural Development Guaranteed Loans
In line with its mandate, the USDA RD is all for strengthening rural communities by making targeted investments totaling $216 billion as of 2016.
One way for the USDA RD to achieve this mission is by providing loan guarantees in these areas:
- Rural Housing
- Rural Business and Cooperative
- Rural Utilities
Check out the agency’s progress so far with results that include both guaranteed and direct loans and grants for the fiscal year 2016 accessible here.
Rural Housing and Community Facilities
The USDA through its Rural Housing Service (RHS) offers single-family housing loans for families with modest income buying homes in eligible rural areas, providing a 90% loan guarantee to such mortgages.
Direct and guaranteed loans combined, $17.3 billion went to 132,000 families for the financing, repairing or refinancing their single-family homes, according to the USDA RD’s 2016 progress report.
This USDA guarantee extends to multi-family housing that finances affordable rental housing for families and individuals with low and moderate income in rural areas. The elderly, disabled individuals, and domestic farm laborers are also the target recipients of these low-rent housing units.
As of 2016, 13,590 families benefited from the construction or renovation of 500 multi-family housing properties made possible by $400 million in guaranteed and direct loans and grants. RHS also made $1.4 billion in rental assistance to 306,970 families with very low and low income.
USDA-approved lenders are accessible here.
Aside from housing families, the USDA guarantees financing to federally recognized tribes, community-based nonprofits and public bodies to construct or improve essential community facilities such as hospitals, town halls and community centers.
This program has served more than 26.4 mil. rural residents through projects worth $2.5 billion in community facilities direct and guaranteed loans and grants.
Rural Business and Cooperative Services
The USDA RD through its Rural Business-Cooperative Service (RBS) guarantees loans for rural businesses. Individuals, public bodies, nonprofits, cooperatives and tribes may apply for the development, conversion or expansion of business; the purchase of assets critical to business, and debt financing.
RBS helped more than 7,000 businesses create or save 37,190 jobs across rural America in 2016. Also from 2009 to 2016, $11.5 billion in direct and guaranteed loans was given to rural businesses.
Not only that, RBS helps rural business owners, farmers and ranchers save on their energy bills by investing in energy efficient technologies through the Rural Energy for America Program.
REAP, which offers direct and guaranteed loans, has supported over 1,900 energy projects worth $309 million.
Partnership with Rural Utility Providers
Through Rural Utilities Service (RUS), the USDA RD has teamed up with utility providers to build and invest in energy efficiency projects for local rural communities. This in turn will be passed to residential and commercial customers in the form of lower energy costs.
RUS makes available direct loans, guaranteed loans and grants for:
- Water and waste disposal whereby RUS has funded $1.65 billion in safe water and sanitary waste systems for more than 2.24 billion rural residents.
- Rural broadband and telecommunications where more than 79,000 subscribers benefiting from $234 million in telecommunications and broadband service projects.
- Electric utilities served more than 5.47 million rural customers that benefited from $3.9 billion in utility system upgrades and improvements.
Stay tuned for more updates on the USDA Rural Development’s programs and services, especially on housing loans.
