Delta Grassroots Caucus Events

Credit Michael Hibblen/ KUAR News, Arkansas Public Radio; Former President Bill Clinton speaking to the Delta Grassroots Caucus on May 2, 2013, at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, Little Rock

U. S. Senator John Boozman, Arkansas, at a Delta Grassroots Caucus meeting at the US Capitol

Brad Cole, Executive Director of the Municipal League of Illinois; previously a senior aide to former Republican US Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, earlier Mayor of Carbondale, Illinois, veteran Delta regional advocate, speaking at the Delta regional conference in West Memphis, Arkansas on April 26, 2019.

President Bill Clinton makes a comment to Delta Caucus Director Lee Powell at a meeting in Blytheville, Arkansas (in the northeast Arkansas Delta) on Nov. 2, 2014

The Delta Caucus would like to pay tribute to the late, great U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, a powerful force in the US Senate for decades and a champion for the Delta. Sen. Cochran passed away on May 30, 2019. He spoke to the Delta Caucus on many occasions over the years (he is pictured above speaking to a Caucus event on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC) and his thoughtful, courteous and bipartisan leadership will be sorely missed.

Marcie Lawson, Executive Director, Sikeston, Missouri Regional Chamber and Area Economic Development Corporation, speaking at the Delta regional conference in West Memphis, Arkansas on April 26, 2019.

Alan Gumbel, Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce, Memphis, Tennessee, speaking at the Delta regional conference in West Memphis, Arkansas on April 26, 2019.

Mayor Shirley Washington of Pine Bluff, AR, speaking to the Delta Caucus at the Arkansas Capitol Rotunda in 2017.

USDA Begins Disbursing Rural Housing Guaranteed Loans from Recovery Act of 2009

Posted on April 06, 2009 at 11:01 AM

USDA has started disbursing the first part of the $10 billion in guaranteed housing loans in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. We include information about this because of the tremendous importance for the Delta region of housing for job creation and assisting home ownership in the current recession, and as part of our ongoing efforts to monitor the Recovery Act funding issues.

USDA reports that funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will initially provide 15,000 rural families with $1.76 billion in loan guarantees for homeownership financing, thus creating or saving about 7,500 jobs.

The entire Recovery Act funding for rural housing will include $7 billion directly to the states and $3 billion held in reserve for higher need areas, of which the Delta is certainly one. This funding will create or save an estimated 42,500 jobs.

The first part of the funding announced this week includes approximately $213,855,000 in funding for Tennessee; $201,855,000 for Arkansas; $159, 050,000 for Mississippi; and $138,407,000. In these four states the Delta areas are substantial parts of the entire state (the Delta Regional Authority area is close to half the population in Arkansas and Mississippi, slightly over half in Louisiana, and somewhat less than half in Tennessee), so these figures give some very rough approximation of the funding going to the Delta areas of these states.

For Missouri, Kentucky, Alabama and Illinois the Delta areas are relatively speaking much smaller so it would not be informative or accurate to include those amounts for those states.

USDA’s single family housing loans to rural residents are extremely important in the Delta. They are designed to improve the quality of life for rural Americans by ensuring that they have access to safe, well-built, affordable homes. The programs finance new or improved housing for very low- to moderate-income families and individuals in rural areas.

A state breakout of rural housing funding announced this week is available at http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/ARRASFH.pdf. More information about the Federal government’s efforts on the economic stimulus is available at www.recovery.gov.

There is also a great deal of valuable information about rural housing issues on the website of the national Housing Assistance Council (HAC) based in Washington, DC. HAC works on improving housing conditions for the rural poor throughout America and has a long tradition of focusing substantial attention on housing in the Delta. Their website is at www.ruralhome.org

Thanks very much.–Lee Powell, MDGC (202) 360-6347