Assistance program
Section 538 Rural Rental Housing Guaranteed Loans
$49.7 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Rural Housing Service, Agriculture, Department of
- Assistance
- Guaranteed/Insured Loans
- CFDA number
- 10.438
- What it does
- This program has been designed to increase the supply of affordable multifamily housing in rural areas through partnerships between Rural Development and major lending sources, as well as State and local housing finance agencies and bond insurers. The program provides Federal credit enhancement to encourage private and public lenders to make new loans for affordable rental properties that meet program standards.
- Who benefits
- Occupants must be families or persons with income not in excess of 115 percent of the Median Income at the time of initial occupancy.
- Who applies
- The applicant in this program is the lender. The lender must be approved and currently active with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD/FHA insurance programs, Ginnie Mae or be a State or local Housing Finance Agency. A member of the Federal Home Loan Bank System or other lender may be able to participate if they can demonstrate satisfactory experience with multifamily lending.
- Authorized by
- 42 U.S.C. § 1490p-2
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments