LVMAC Tidbit — Ever Consider a Career in Farming? Looking for Housing?

It is estimated forty-five percent of those in the armed forces are from rural areas.  Surprisingly, considering its its wealth of industry and size of population, Pennsylvania has large rural tracts.   About 89.5% of its area and 21.3% of its population is rural.  Even in the Lehigh Valley, the third largest metropolitan area of commonwealth, there are sizeable, rural areas.  These fall within the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s sphere of responsibility, and that is useful to know.

Since veterans — as a result of service or origins — often carry with them some of the skills and characteristics which make a good farmer, since there is increasing demand for farming, and since Pennsylvania has sizeable rural areas, we thought we would introduce you to the department’s  farm programs for veterans.

Even if you are not a farmer, you might want to explore their housing, mortgaging and apartment programs.  Their Income and Property Eligibility site is a particularly useful tool and reveals that eligible areas for their housing activities are larger than the municipality map above would suggest (there are various definitions of rural areas used by different agencies).  For example, larger parts of Lehigh and Northampton county are eligible.

This is one potentially, helpful federal agency which the veterans community and transitioning service members often overlook.

###

As of 6 June 2016