HYRUM – After nearly 25,000 hours of blood, sweat and tears, 10 families slept in their new Hyrum homes on Thursday night after celebrating the completion of the city’s first mutual self-help housing community.

Wasilla, Alaska – Last year, Kolten Conan was scrolling through his Facebook page, and he happened upon photos of a house under construction. He already knew a thing or two about building homes: he’s now 21 and when he was just a little boy, he had scampered among laborers at construction sites around his hometown of Wasilla, fetching boards and helping out with seasonal work.

Nibley, Utah – Sometime during the 10 or so months it took Veronica Cabrera to build her family home here in northern Utah, she began to feel a persistent, dull ache all over her left side. She chalked it up to perhaps sleeping poorly, or else the strenuous labor, particularly during the winter months, when she was building her self-help home.

Policy update—The President has released what is called the “skinny budget” for FY 2018. As the President said in his first State of the Union Address, he is proposing a significant increase to the defense budget, which he intends to “offset “with cuts to domestic discretionary spending.

In this issue: Policy update: income banding—another perspective; A Photographic Chronicle of America’s Working Poor; Dear Sher addresses some of the recent changes to Handbook 3550-1; and RCAC is hiring a Rural Development Specialist in housing.