FHA Loan Helps J.J. Allisons Family in Leicester, 1971

“FHA Loans Enabling Rural Folk to Live in Comfort” by John C. Dills, Citizen Staff Writer, as published in The Asheville Citizen, May 17, 1971

The J.J. Allisons of Leicester raised a family in a beat-up old house. But now they live in a brand-new electrically heated brick and masonry house next door to where the old one stood.

For more than 12 years, they lived in a little wooden place that was little more than a shack, with windows covered with plastic and great gaps in the weatherboarding that let in the snow and wind in winter.

The new house is tight, weather-proof and comfortable in winter and summer, Allison said—with quick agreement by his wife.

The Allisons are not unique.

They are clients, so to speak, of the U.S. Farmers Home Administration, which makes loans to rural families whose income is too low for any other lending agency to deal with.

The Allisons were not able to obtain a building loan from a commercial lending institution because of their income level, according to J. Kelly Ray, FHA loan officer for Buncombe and McDowell counties.

The Allisons came to Buncombe County in 1958 from Madison County’s Spring Creak section. The FHA made them a loan to buy a 49-acre farm, where Allison planned to produce Grade C milk and raise tobacco.  The family income the first year was only $2,380—on which they had to raise six children—four boys and two girls, in addition to keeping Allison’s mother, who is now deceased.

Today, all six children are married, leaving only Mr. and Mrs. Allison to share the new three-bedroom house, except when the children or some of their 16 grandchildren come to visit.

Allison also got $740 from the Forest Service for serving as fire lookout during the winter months.

He has changed his farming operation, raising Shorthorn and Whiteface cattle which he sells as feeder calves, using his own stock for breeding. He grows about .45 acre of tobacco, and to supplement his farm income, he and his wife operate the Royster Fertilizer store at Leicester, and during the tobacco market he works at Planter’s Tobacco Warehouse.

Allison said low income kept him from building sooner.

His income has increased from $3,200 a year to about $7,000, from all his endeavors.

The old house, he said, had only four rooms—and only one bedroom.

Allison did a lot of the work of building his new house himself, thus reducing the ultimate cost, he said.

The new house has double insulation, six rooms with paneled walls, an eight-inch masonry wall with brick face and full studs for the interior panels.

The old house had no bathroom, although the Allisons did have hot and cold running water—they installed it themselves.

The Allisons are among 100 farm families who have received home building loans from FHA since July, 1970, Ray said.

He said FHA has made a total of $1.5 million in loans since then, and the state has $30 million available to loan between now and the end of the fiscal year (June 30).

Others, he said, can, like the Allisons, obtain home building loans if they live in a sparsely-enough populated area and their incomes are too low to permit them to obtain commercial loans.

Interested persons may obtain information from Ray at his office in the Buncombe County Courthouse.