FAYETTEVILLE -- The difficulty of attracting home builders to rural areas threatens the recovery of cities like Wynne after the tornadoes of March 31, said Xochitl Torres Small, under-secretary for rural development.
"If contractors don't go there to rebuild, Wynne will become a much smaller town," Small said. Home builders and contractors are drawn to booming housing markets like the cities in Northwest Arkansas, she and U.S. Sen. John Boozman of Rogers said.
Small joined Boozman and a panel of experts Monday at the Milo J. Shult Agricultural Research and Extension Center of the University of Arkansas to discuss rural issues. Boozman is the ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.
Builders and contractors concentrate in booming markets, and lack of housing in rural areas drives more people to those cities, Small said. Boozman called this urban-rural disparity a serious problem. The issue came up in questions from the audience of at least 40 and took up most of the 90-minute meeting.
"You can build exactly the same house and sell it for more in a growing area than in a rural one," Boozman said. And builders and contractors find it easier and cheaper to develop subdivisions in a booming town than haul materials out to rural areas to work on smaller housing projects, he said.
The housing shortage even affects rural areas with declining populations, because existing housing in those areas is aging, Small and other panelists said.
The agriculture department recognized the problem and was working with local authorities around the country to find solutions long before the latest tornadoes, Small said. The recent natural disaster only highlights the situation, she said. Small said she met with Wynne's mayor before coming to Fayetteville.
Smaller communities and rural areas are trying to form regional partnerships to draw builders and take a more coordinated approach on other issues, said Mike Malone, vice chancellor for economic development at the university. "Besides being rural, we're small," Malone said of Arkansas. "We really have to partner together."
Communities who banded together and cooperated on planning a development of, for instance, 45 houses would be better able to have a much better chance of attracting developers, contractors and financing than for smaller projects separately, panelists agreed.
Mayor Susan Wilson of Mountainburg in Crawford County, among others, said a big problem in rural development remains the difficulty of applying for grants and other federal assistance and programs. The grant application for water projects in her community ran on for more than 400 pages by the time the process was complete, she said.
Small rural towns lack the staff needed to comply with federal programs set up to assist them, Wilson said, and other audience members agreed.
"You shouldn't have to hire a grant writer to do these things," Boozman said.
Another problem is the relative lack of philanthropy in rural areas, audience member Kim Davis, senior advisor for the Home Region Program of the Walton Family Foundation, told the panel. "Almost 20% of the [U.S.] population lives in rural areas, but those areas draw between 5% and 7% of philanthropy dollars," he said.
Another major topic of the discussion was expanding broadband internet access. "We used to say economic development had three "Rs" -- roads, railroads and runways," Boozman said. "Not any more. If you don't have good broadband you simply aren't going to grow."