Rural Housing
The Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs (IIRA) has a long history of assisting rural communities to enable them to address their housing challenges and take advantage of their housing opportunities through the Mapping program, Rural Community Development Initiative programs, and more.
Currently, the IIRA offers technical assistance to land banks and communities that are either in a land bank or considering joining a land bank. Please reach out to John Bannon at jr-bannon@wiu.edu or Sean Park at ms-park@wiu.edu for details.
Summary: The IIRA is working with the Illinois Housing Development Authority as a sub-contractor through Teska Associates, Inc. This means we can provide technical assistance to communities in a land bank or who are considering joining a land bank free of charge.
What can the IIRA do?
- Meet you where you are as a rural community. The IIRA has worked with rural communities across Illinois since 1989. We know that staff, time, and resources are scarce and we can create a strategy to tackle your housing needs that is right-sized for your community.
- Determine housing priorities for your community, or work with what if you have if they are already written out. Decide if housing is a priority and if it make sense to come up with a scope of work that we would do to make sure expectations are clear for everyone.
- Create a list of priority properties that your community wants to be addressed. It is important that your community come up with your priority properties, whether these are blighted structures that need to be demolished or rehabilitated, vacant lots, or greenfield development.
- Develop a strategy to address those priority properties. Categorize properties according to potential remediation, tax status, etc. Develop the tools – code enforcement, legal, codes, funding, and more flesh out those strategies.
- Partner as appropriate. There are land banks and technical assistance partners that may make sense to bring in.
- Identify funding sources. This could be municipal funds, grant, funds, or other funding sources.
- Work with the community to operationalize the plan. For example, if blight is a priority, we would work through code enforcement, legal strategies, and mitigation, being available as technical assistance and connecting the community with other resources throughout the process. This would typically involve an initial meeting via video call, some preparation of property lists and research on the part of the community, a windshield tour of the properties / in-person visit, and more virtual check-ins on progress.
- Our goal is to help the community realize your housing goals and resolve your housing issues.
Convening
What:
Southern Illinois Convening: Matching Vacant Land to Community Needs
When:
November 10, 2026
9:30 am – 3:30 pm
Where:
Greater Egypt Regional Planning and Development Commission
3117 Civic Circle Boulevard, Suite A,
Marion IL 62959-5222