Where: Provo, Utah
Problem: Low-income Utah families lack affordable housing.
Solution: RCAC works with self-help housing agencies to help families achieve their dream of affordable home ownership.

More than 46,000 low-income Utah families lack access to affordable housing. The burden is especially heavy for extremely low-income households that live on less than $22,000 per year; a recent housing report shows that 78 percent of those house¬holds spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing costs. There simply aren’t enough affordable units to meet the housing need.

RCAC works with eight rural nonprofit housing organizations in Utah through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Mutual Self-Help Housing Program to create opportunities for working families to access safe and affordable homes. RCAC works with these organizations to resolve program management and program implementation issues and meet key performance milestones.

One example of the work is in Provo, Utah, where Self-Help Homes assisted 30 families to build their own homes in 2015 using the self-help model. As with all self-help housing projects, participants are required to provide at least 65 percent of the labor to build their home and their neighbors’ homes. They work 35 hours per week, in addition to their day jobs, for almost a year. This “sweat equity” is contributed in lieu of a down payment, creating an affordable mortgage.

“Now that we have moved in, we see that the blessings of the program are more than simply owning a home,” said one program participant. “We know that we were led to this program and not a day goes by that we are not grateful for the opportu¬nity to build with Self-Help Homes.”

During 2015, families, nonprofit organizations and USDA across the country celebrated the 50,000 dreams of homeownership realized during the 50 years of the program. In addition to the Section 523 Mutual Self-Help Program, the Section 502 Direct Loan program for the participants is vital to the success of the participant families.