Rethink Rural Housing

We, the Rural Housing Collaborative, made our second annual presentation at the Rural Housing Conference on November 14^th. The topic: Building a Rural Housing Playbook—an interactive session where the audience is the presenter.

Audience members were challenged to discuss how communities and resource providers could better connect to one another. We received all kinds of great feedback on how to build more effective housing development infrastructure in rural towns in South Dakota. Here are some of the highlights:

• Communities need a support system when it comes to housing—it’s about appropriate communication, applicable technical assistance, and building relationships.
• Resource providers are open to all sorts of ways to connect more effectively to communities and to each other—whether it is through quarterly conferences, a resource provider road show, or by getting their hands dirty through some hands on pilot projects.
• Resource providers and communities alike need a go-to person or group when it comes to housing. Resource providers need to identify who can get things done in a community; while communities need someone they know they can go to for help navigating the system.

The pictures below were presented by groups at the session, and depict ways rural housing providers and communities can better connect to one another.

Jim Beddow and I are in Jackson Hole, Wyoming today. We’re here to talk about the Rethink Rural Housing project with 25 managers from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Region 8. This afternoon we discussed our learning and ideas so far with the group, and the 25 Region 8 managers shared some terrific insights and learning ideas for the Rural Housing Collaborative to follow up on. Thanks to all who participated today! We even built some more blue houses (pictures coming soon). We’re going out for dinner with the HUD folks this evening, then heading back to the Black Hills tomorrow to visit with Collaborative member Joy McCracken (Neighborhood Housing Services of the Black Hills) about a project we’re watching closely near Sturgis.

Here is our presentation from today:

http://www.slideshare.net/joebart33/rural-housing-hud-conference-9-26-2007-final/1

I’ll be part of a panel on Thursday, September 20 on the Opportunity Roundtable sponsored by SD Rural Enterprise, Inc. The Roundtable is a free conference call where folks can listen in to a panel and then ask questions. Today’s topic is rural housing. Click here to learn more and register.

Rural Housing Collaborative will be hosting a session at the 2007 SD Housing Conference in Pierre on November 13. Here’s the low down on our breakout session:

”Building A Rural Housing Playbook.”

“A group of organizations called the Rural Housing Collaborative is creating a new guide for small communities. Join this interactive session where the audience is the presenter, and help to co-design a “playbook” for small community housing development.”

Click here to learn more or register for the conference. Hope to see you there!

Much of the learning we’ve been doing as part of this project has been about studying and listening. Now we’re also learning by doing. The Rural Housing Collaborative has partnered with SD American Institute of Architects to create design:South Dakota, a volunteer team of architects, designers, engineers and rural community development pros who will visit small towns around the state to help them gather visions for the future and sketch what those visions might look like.

Our first community will be Corsica, SD. You can learn all about the project by visiting designsd.org.  Just click here to visit the design:SD website.

Over the past six months, the Rural Housing Collaborative has visited over twenty rural South Dakota communities to study and learn the stories behind real developments and projects. We will begin to share those stories with you occasionally on this blog, and we hope you’ll share yours too.

So, share your rural housing stories by posting them in the comments (just click “comment” at the bottom of this or any blog posting).  Also, if your community would like to join the waiting list for info on the Rural Housing Playbook (coming in 2007), let us know. If you have questions, you can post them in the comments (so everyone can see) or just email me directly.

Happy holidays,

Joe Bartmann

The Rural Housing Collaborative (RHC) team kicked off December by heading to the SD Association of Towns and Townships Conference in Sioux Falls (that’s Eric Ambroson from Planning District III pointing at the screen).

This time, RHC shared the stage with Shawn Pritchett of the SD Rural Development Council. Shawn talked about his organization’s Community Assessment Program, which may play a key roll in identifying communities that are ready for the Rural Housing Playbook training (to be launched in mid-2007).

The RHC’s “Build a Blue House” excercise was a hit again. Check out the teams at work (click on the images to see them big)…

Now that we’re all back at the office and have picked up all the pieces from a week-long road trip, I’m posting some pictures from the SD Housing Conference (our session was last Wednesday morning). We thought the manifesto was pretty well-received, and a lot of people from small towns across South Dakota have contacted us. Many are interested in being part of the Community Design Team Pilot Project and/or the Rural Housing Playbook and Team Camp. We will be posting details in the coming weeks about both of these projects, and plan to roll them both out in the Spring of 2007.

Roughly 25% of the session crowd said they live in a small town. We also reached a lot of resource providers and potential supporters with our message. One unexpected guest: Larry Olson from MetroPlains was in the crowd. We used a number of images (with permission) from one of MetroPlains’ housing developments in Cambridge, MN.

Thank you to SD Housing Development Authority for putting on a great conference, and having the courage to invite us to present a plenary session. Also a huge thanks to the rest of the Rural Housing Collaborative for putting this show together–especially to my partner in crime, Eric Ambroson from Planning and Development District III. Enjoy the pictures! (there are more after the “jump”)

As always, comments are open. Please share your thoughts!

Joe Bartmann

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Eric Ambroson and I will be making the first public presentation on our rural housing manifesto later this morning. We’re hosting the plenary session at the South Dakota Housing Conference in Pierre at 8:30 am. How did Eric and I get thrust into this spotlight? We’re still not sure, but we hope to put on a good show. We’ll have a few twists–like getting groups at the session to build a little cardboard house and showing a clip from my daughters’ favorite cartoon. If you attend/attended the session, please shoot us some feedback by clicking on “Comment,” we’d appreciate your input. We’ll be presenting at a few more conferences in coming months too.

You should notice some changes to this site in the coming week or so. We’ll be tweaking the site’s navigation a bit, and updating you with the newest version of the Rethink Rural Housing manifesto. Stay tuned!

Joe Bartmann,

The Rural Learning Center

Our manifesto is live. You can now read The Rural Housing Collaborative’s full manifesto called “Flipping the Switch: why we need to rethink rural housing in South Dakota” here on this site. Just click manifesto at the top of the page.

So, what the heck is a manifesto? Don’t worry, we’re not forming a new political party or taking over the world. A manifesto is “a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives,” according to dictionary.com. Simply, it’s a statement about what we think. It’s nothing scary–just our “position paper” on housing in South Dakota’s rural communities.
We don’t want to spoil it for you, so we’ll just let you in a little on the title’s meaning. Small Towns in South Dakota are in the dark about housing development. Our research has given us some ideas on how we might all work together to flip the switch (thus, turning on the light) in our state.

We will be putting up a printer and download-friendly pdf version of the manifesto soon.

Please give it a read, and then let us, and the rest of the readers, know what you think by posting comments. Keep the conversation rolling!