Rural Community Assistance Partnership

Practical solutions for improving rural communities
front-page-banner-img

poverty

Daily Yonder blog: Rural poverty rate reaches 18.3% in 2011

Posted Mon, 2013/01/14 - 12:00pm by RCAP

The Daily Yonder blog reported Jan. 8 that "the percentage of people living in poverty increased from 15.8 percent of those living in rural counties in 2007, before the recession began, to 18.3 percent in 2011."

Poverty and housing needs persist in rural America as population changes

Posted Wed, 2012/12/12 - 12:30pm by RCAP

WASHINGTON (HAC) – For decades before the current recession, rural Americans struggled with poverty and housing problems. In fact, a new Housing Assistance Council study reports, rural America encompasses 86 percent of the U.S. counties where poverty rates have remained at 20 percent or higher since at least 1990.

ABC News profiles Colonias

Posted Tue, 2012/05/01 - 3:08pm by RCAP

ABC News, as part of its "Hidden America" series, produced a story on the Colonias in late April.

An ABC correspondent visited some of these communities in Texas along the Mexican border. The story desribes these communities as a "no-man's land" and "forgotten." These very poor communities that often have no services and where people live in make-shift homes are among the small, often unincorporated communities that RCAP works in.