Rural South Dakota’s growth strategy has to start under a roof

On any given day in Sisseton, Milbank or Winner, you will pass an employer with a hiring sign in the window, or you will see an advertisement on social media or in the local newspaper. Some have been advertising for six months. Some for a year. The applicants are out there, and they’re interested. The shift schedule is written. What is missing is the second half of the equation: somewhere for those workers to live.

That gap is the most consistent story I hear throughout rural South Dakota. Our economy is doing its part. Our housing has stopped keeping up with what that economy is asking of it.

Founded in 2007, GROW South Dakota is a statewide nonprofit advancing rural housing, community development and economic opportunity across South Dakota. Each year, we provide down payment assistance, mortgage lending and housing counseling to hundreds of families, and help rural school districts, agricultural employers and manufacturers address one of their newest strategic challenges.

New program provides 5% down payment for qualifying South Dakota homebuyers

Housing challenges look different in rural South Dakota. Often, it’s a home that is too expensive to repair for what it’s worth, a contractor driving hours to reach a job site, or a lender without enough comparable sales to finance a modest home in a small town. Distance becomes part of the cost of housing, even if it never appears on a closing statement.

Those challenges also affect our employers. Manufacturers, health care providers, schools and agricultural businesses tell us their employees struggle to find housing. In my conversations with nearby communities, I consistently hear that they need additional homes to keep up with the people who want to live and work there. We’ve seen nurses and teachers accept positions, only to discover there isn’t a home available within a reasonable commute. Housing is an economic development issue as much as a community development one.

The challenges are even greater for many of our tribal communities, where decades of limited access to mortgage financing have made homeownership hard to achieve. That’s why partnerships matter. Organizations like Lakota Funds, the NeighborWorks Dakota Coalition and the South Dakota Native Homeownership Coalition are helping expand opportunity through collaboration, patient investment and trusted local relationships. Building homeownership on tribal land doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, persistence and people who are committed to showing up year after year.

GROW SD is part of the NeighborWorks America network, a national platform of nearly 250 community-based housing organizations working in almost every state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Closer to home, we are one of four members of the NeighborWorks Dakota Coalition, which serves rural and Native communities across South and North Dakota.

In fiscal year 2025, coalition members helped 117 households become homeowners. That same year, our four organizations used $1.59 million in NeighborWorks America grants to leverage more than $213 million in total investment, or $134 for every grant dollar. In our state of South Dakota, where the margins on any single project are thin and the distances between projects are long, that multiplier is not a talking point. It is the difference between a project happening this year or not happening at all.

What is needed is the right type of financing tools that are built for towns our size, technical support designed for rural areas and partners patient enough to measure success in years rather than quarters.

We know many of the solutions because we’ve seen them work. When housing is part of an economic development conversation from the beginning, communities are better positioned to grow. When builders, lenders, employers and local leaders work together, they can create opportunities that wouldn’t happen alone. Rural communities have always found ways to solve problems by working together, and housing is no different.

The hiring signs you see in Sisseton, Milbank, Winner and communities across South Dakota tell us employers believe in the future of rural America. Our responsibility is to make sure families find a place to live when those opportunities come. That’s how communities grow. Not all at once, but one home, one family and one neighborhood at a time.