"The Shutdown's Ripple Effects in Rural America"

"The Shutdown's Ripple Effects in Rural America"
The New Yorker | October 2013

“In 2003, the nonprofit organization Housing Vermont began renovating a deteriorating apartment building in the depressed manufacturing town of Springfield. The total mortgage on the newly refurbished, thirteen-unit property was thirteen thousand dollars per month, and the renters could cover only three thousand dollars of that. Rental-assistance payments from a U.S.D.A. program covered the rest.
It worked out fine until July, when Housing Vermont got a letter from the U.S.D.A.’s Rural Development office, warning that its rental-assistance program would run out of money starting in September. ”