Housing America adds another self-help home in Somerton

Housing America Corporation has added another home in Somerton through its federal self-help housing program, continuing a local effort that has helped hundreds of Yuma County families move toward ownership.

The Somerton-based nonprofit, founded in 1976, uses USDA Mutual Self-Help Housing Technical Assistance Grants to supervise very-low- and low-income families as they build their own homes in rural areas. Under that model, participants do most of the labor on one another’s houses, while Housing America provides the technical assistance, site oversight and housing guidance that make the projects possible. The work typically stretches across about 52 weeks, turning the construction site into a shared effort as much as a building project.

The program’s local reach has been concentrated in Somerton and nearby San Luis, where housing demand has stayed high and affordable options remain limited. In March 2025, USDA Rural Development extended Housing America an $840,000 grant that was expected to support technical assistance for 20 families beginning in the Somerton 1898 subdivision. Housing America has also said eligible participants must be Yuma County residents, meet USDA income guidelines and complete credit and income checks before being accepted.

For families who qualify, the program is one of the few paths to a house they can help build and eventually own. Earlier participants, including Jesús Garcia and Lydia Cortez, described the program as a way to make homeownership more affordable while building lasting bonds with the neighbors they worked beside. That social network matters in a place like Somerton, where new ownership opportunities are scarce and many households are still looking for a stable foothold in the local market.

Housing America’s track record shows the effort has real local weight, but it is still incremental. KYMA reported in January 2024 that the organization completed affordable housing in Somerton’s Rollow subdivision after a nine-year process that began in 2015. The nonprofit also operates subsidized rental housing in Somerton, Yuma and Kingman, giving it a wider role in the county’s housing safety net.

A USDA blog post also noted a $1.8 million technical assistance grant and a celebration with local officials and clients around housing projects in Somerton, underscoring how central the program has become in this corner of Yuma County. Even so, each new home adds only one more unit to a market where affordability pressures are far larger than any single subdivision can solve.