The affordable housing shortage is reshaping parts of rural America

hen Suzanne D’Amico moved from Dallas an hour north to Celina, Texas, there was one grocery store, longhorn cattle down the road and no lights on the horizon at night. Farmers wearing overalls gathered for morning coffee, teenagers packed the local pizzeria after Friday night football games, and neighbors prayed together at church on Sunday.

“It felt like we were on another planet,” said D’Amico, who has lived for nearly 30 years in Celina where she raised her children. “We weren’t just outside the city, we were completely gone from anything we considered at the time remotely civilized.”

But D’Amico’s slice of small town America is quickly vanishing. Like rural communities across the country, Celina is seeing a housing boom that made it America’s fastest growing city in 2023. Now, pastures have been replaced with densely packed homes, golf carts zip around planned communities where tractors once plowed and local businesses are being replaced with big box chains.
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RSK: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly in developing rural America....a case study in Celina Tx.