ShareAlmost every city dweller gets the same feeling when they drive through a small town surrounded by farms, fields and forests. People can’t help but wonder —if just for a moment—what it would be like to live there. Would the peace and quiet be worth the sacrifices? Could they find a home? A nearby dentist? Sushi?
A growing number of people are willing to try. After a decade in which the number of people moving to rural areas fell, the number of people choosing the wide-open spaces is increasing. “Something’s brewing in rural America,” said Joaquin Altoro, rural housing services administrator for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Net rural migration—the number of people moving into rural areas minus the number moving out—resulted in a population influx of 0.92 percent in the combined years of 2020-21 and 2021-22 after an outflow of 1.1 percent between 2010 and 2020, according to the 2023 edition of “Rural America at a Glance” published by the USDA.
The influx—which primarily originated from other parts of the United States rather than from other countries—more than offset the drain due to rural deaths exceeding rural births. The result: a 0.25 percent net increase in the overall rural population (including births/deaths) between mid-2020 and mid-2022.
Modest as it may seem, that is a turnaround with existential implications for the future of rural America.
“Communities are people. Communities that lose people are going to struggle,” said Mike Watson, director of livable communities at AARP. “The more people that are living in a community, the more people are spending their dollars there, the more tax base that community has and the more economic growth it will continue to attract.”
Despite the overall turnaround, many places did lose people in 2020-21 and 2021-22 as 829 out of 1,976 rural counties continued to experience a population outflow, according to the USDA. Hardest hit were many poor counties in the South, some farming counties in the Midwest, a number of sparsely settled counties in the West and numerous oil-and-gas-producing counties in the Great Plains.
Still, a clear majority of rural counties experienced an influx. The hottest spots were within hailing distance of large urban areas and in prime retirement and recreation destinations such as the northern Great Lakes, Southern Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains—a likely reflection of baby boomers retiring and the opportunity for younger generations to work remotely.
The question now becomes whether the influx will continue and include more communities in the turnaround.
The answer depends greatly on how well rural communities address the housing, employment, medical and other needs of all generations ranging from young adults who left but want to return to seniors who want to age in place but lack senior living alternatives and easy access to health care.
A healthy rural America is essential.
A healthy, not hollow, rural America is essential, Altoro said. “Rural America is a place where we make things. It’s where our food comes from,” he said. “It’s important for people to recognize how rural America—its land, its people, its infrastructure—provides for the rest of America.”
Probably the biggest need across all generations of rural residents is an expanded mix of housing. “Small towns can be really great places to live, but many small towns lack the kind of housing that meets the needs of all the people who want to live there,” said Katharine Burgess, vice president of land use and development with Smart Growth America. “Right now, there’s a mismatch between the level of housing available and the need for housing.”
In large measure, the mismatch reflects the obstacles to constructing alternatives to traditional single-family housing in many rural communities—either because local developers are not prepared to build it or local zoning regulations stymie it.
“Some examples of zoning barriers are bans on accessory dwelling units, minimum lot-size requirements and lack of support for missing middle typologies such as duplexes, fourplexes and smaller-scale apartment buildings… which can be really attractive for intergenerational living,” Burgess said.
The good news, she said, is that many states are adopting policies that are leading rural communities to lower those barriers. Not only is that helping deliver the additional housing that is needed, but it also leverages the ability of new housing to support a more vibrant downtown environment with a mix of shopping, dining and residential choices—an essential amenity for young and old alike.
Complete Streets policies are another way rural communities can improve their quality of life for all ages, Burgess said. “These are street designs that create a wonderful environment for pedestrians, cyclists and people with mobility impairments or other needs as well as for drivers,” she said.
A 2023 report from Smart Growth America titled “An Active Road Map: Best Practices in Rural Mobility,” notes the importance of Complete Streets interventions to economic development and the role they play in attracting and retaining a labor force that increasingly prefers to live in walkable communities that don’t require them to drive to get to all of their daily needs and activities.
The Monroe Street Corridor project in Ruston, La., recently completed a seven-mile walking and biking path connecting key areas of the city, including downtown, Louisiana Tech University, health-care facilities and shopping/dining/employment opportunities. The corridor features many upgrades that make it accessible to pedestrians of all ages and abilities.
Although there is no escaping the reality that cars remain necessary to cover the long distances between many rural destinations, that does not mean they must remain the king of the road.
In Brattleboro, Vt., a speed limit of 25 miles per hour on city streets combined with relatively narrow road designs prevent cars from zooming through at high speeds. Signalized pedestrian scramble intersections force all cars to stop at the same time in all directions and don’t allow right turns on red, enabling pedestrians to cross in any direction—including diagonally—without having to watch for cars.
“There can be stereotypes that some of these interventions are more compatible with a big city context, but that’s really not the case,” Burgess said. “These design approaches create a welcoming and vibrant environment in communities of lots of different sizes.”
The USDA helps meet housing needs in areas with populations of less than 35,000 through loans, loan guarantees and grants that are used to build new housing units, repair existing housing units and provide rent assistance. Although the programs cover both single-family and multifamily housing, the emphasis is on affordable multifamily housing. “We have about 400,000 units in our portfolio,” said the USDA’s Altoro.
One of the USDA’s most creative housing solutions is the Mutual Self-Help Housing program, which awards grants to qualified organizations that guide rural residents through the process of building their own homes. “It changes a lot of lives,” said Jason Tickle, president and CEO with Caroline County Habitat for Humanity (CCHH) in Bowling Green, Va.
So far CCHH has helped 14 home buyers work together in small teams to build one another’s homes through the self-help program. Although volunteers and skilled trades people—plumbers, electricians, etc.—assist with construction throughout the 10- to 12-month process, the homebuyers must provide 24 to 30 hours a week of labor, some of which can be assigned to a surrogate.
“The cost of the homes is driven down by the sweat equity they have. The goal is to gain 20 percent equity through their labor,” Tickle said. Together with low-interest loans and extended mortgages, the sweat equity makes homeownership possible for people of modest means.
Despite the program’s compelling financial advantages, it can still be a hard sell for people with little or no construction experience. Bowling Green resident Lisa Stevens recalls thinking, “I can’t build a house. I can barely hang a picture.”
After numerous nudges from friends and co-workers, Stevens finally signed up in 2021 and joined a team of four other households. Trained and managed by a supervisor provided by CCHH, they worked shoulder-to shoulder to build each other’s homes in stages so they would all finish at the same time. Later that year, Stevens and her two children and one grandchild finally moved into her new three-bedroom, two-bath home after living in an aging two-bedroom rental home where Stevens slept on the couch.
Although she has a steady job as administrative assistant to the school superintendent, “There is no way I could have afforded that house on my own.”
The hardest part of the process was putting in the required hours while also holding down a full-time job, but all the weariness was worth it when she received her housekeys.
“It’s definitely not just a house,” Stevens said with a slight pause. “It’s a home.”
Any discussion about the future of rural America must include the graying of rural America’s 46 million residents. In 2021, people 65 years and older made up more than 20 percent of the rural population for the first time in history, up from 16 percent in 2010, according to the USDA.
On one hand, this indicates that many rural residents want to age in place, which helps stabilize the population. On the other hand, a lack of senior-housing alternatives in many rural communities means older residents are forced to stay in their single-family homes longer, choking the “churn” needed to free up housing for younger generations.
“The lack of entry-level housing for young people is a big challenge, especially given that more older folks are aging in place, which slows down the turnover of existing housing,” said Matt Wagner, chief innovation officer at Main Street America.
This comes at a time when more and more young people are being drawn to rural America by the relative affordability of housing outside metro areas, proximity to outdoor recreation opportunities and a chance to start businesses and participate in civic life in the more engaging environment of a small town, Wagner said.
While finding a place to live may be a challenge, many rural communities are making remote workers an offer that’s hard to refuse by paying them thousands of dollars in cash and perks to relocate and help boost the local economy.
The website MakeMyMove connects remote workers with offers from dozens of communities—mostly rural but also urban—across the country. Cumberland, Md., offers a flat $20,000 cash incentive. Mattoon, Ill., offers $5,000 cash toward moving expenses and a host of vouchers, gift cards and free memberships.
Rural communities are paying workers to relocate.
In some areas, multiple communities from the same region work in concert to create collective incentives. The Mountain Towns of Eastern Kentucky offer remote workers $5,000 in cash for relocation, another $2,500 if they bring a spouse that works in education or health care and a welcome package worth $250.
Although not a small town, Topeka, Kan., is part of rural America and is also offering aggressive relocation incentives but with a focus on helping hometown companies meet their employment needs.
“We know that we need to build our population. We know that we need to have a talent pool for our local employers,” said Trina Goss, director of business and talent initiatives with the Greater Topeka Partnership, a coalition of business organizations that includes the chamber of commerce.
The coalition sponsors Choose Topeka, which reimburses companies that offer housing incentives to employees who relocate from outside of Shawnee County. The program offers $15,000 to people purchasing a home and $10,000 to those renting—half paid by the employer and half by Choose Topeka.
“When we started the program, we thought the average salary of these people would be around $60,000, but our average salary is currently sitting at $102,000, which creates a huge economic impact,” Goss said.
One category of workers that is in short supply throughout America—but especially in rural communities—is health-care professionals of all types.
Despite the fact that 20 percent of Americans live in rural communities, only 10 percent of physicians work in rural areas and just one percent of graduate medical training programs in the United States are located in rural communities, according to the National Institutes of Health. The shortage affects all generations, including young families and children, but as rural America continues to grow older, it is an acute pitfall for seniors.
In South Dakota, the Rural Healthcare Facility Recruitment Assistance Program provides a $10,000 payment to eligible health professionals who complete a three-year, full-time service commitment to work in a community with a population of 10,000 or less. The cost of the incentive is split 50/50 between the state and the recipient’s employer unless the population of the community is less than 2,500. Then the state pays 75 percent.
Another avenue for addressing the shortage is “the grow your own” approach in which rural communities sponsor programs to encourage their young people to consider careers in health care and provide opportunities for them to pursue their professional education and training closer to home—a strategy that is based on the idea that rural health-care providers are more likely to serve communities similar to where they grew up or were trained.
In Tahlequah, Okla., the Cherokee Nation and Oklahoma State University collaborated to open the country’s first tribally affiliated medical school. The OSU College of Osteopathic Medicine graduated its inaugural class of 46 physicians earlier this year—a big step forward in addressing the health-care needs of rural, underserved and tribal communities across Oklahoma.
New strategies are being used to ensure the economic vitality and livability of rural areas for future generations.
Across the country, new strategies are being deployed to ensure the economic vitality and livability of rural areas for today’s generations and future generations to come.
