Single Family Housing Program

The Department of Agriculture Rural Housing Service Single Family Housing Program is a civilian sub-agency that funds and contracts for rural housing assistance, including direct lending, loan guarantees, and community development support to expand homeownership and improve housing conditions in underserved rural areas.

The agency operates through two distinct transaction streams. On the contract side, the Rural Housing Service has awarded 45 contracts totaling $128.8 million in combined potential value since 2014, with $110.4 million obligated to date. Recent contracting activity shows 6 awards in 2022, 11 in 2023, 5 in 2024, 6 in 2025, and 5 year-to-date in 2026. The most recent award closed on 2026-09-28. Contract competition is moderately concentrated: the top five primes by award count (Ascribe LLC, Verdi Consulting Inc., Heartland Energy Partners LLC, Equifax Information Services LLC, and Partnership For Public Service Inc.) hold 42 percent of recent awards. By potential value, Rural Community Assistance Corporation, Verdi Consulting Inc., Ascribe LLC, Heartland Energy Partners LLC, and Lift Community Action Agency Inc. account for the same 42 percent of combined potential value. Across all 31 distinct prime contractors awarded, 89 percent of contracts carry no set-aside designation; the remaining 11 percent are Small Business set-asides.

On the grant side, the agency distributes Project Grants exclusively, having obligated $397 million in federal dollars across 28,834 awards since 2016. Recent annual cadence shows 4,259 awards in 2023, 3,494 in 2024, 2,487 in 2025, 1,754 in 2026, and 15 recorded awards year-to-date in 2027. Grant recipients are highly fragmented: the top five by award count hold 0 percent of recent awards (Southeastern Indiana Regional Planning Commission with 9 awards and $1 million federal dollars, North East Community Action Corporation with 8 awards and $924 thousand, Self-Help Home Improvement Project with 7 awards and $2.1 million, The Housing Assistance Corporation with 7 awards and $1.6 million, and Southern Indiana Development Commission with 6 awards and $856 thousand). By federal dollars obligated, the top five recipients (Community Housing Improvement Program Incorporated, Self-Help Home Improvement Project, The Housing Assistance Corporation, Self-Help Enterprises, and Universal Housing Development Corp) hold only 3 percent of combined federal dollars across 421 distinct recipients. This fragmentation reflects the program's design to distribute funds broadly across community action agencies and local housing nonprofits rather than concentrate resources with a small set of recipients.

No recent contract opportunities or grant opportunities are recorded in the source.