News from rural America.

Rural America struggles with opioids and homelessness in unexpected ways, Colorado's Lariat Ditch could help spur local recreation, and book deliveries revive rural communities hit by Hurricane Helene.

TRANSCRIPT

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, this is the news from rural America.

The opioid epidemic is compounding homelessness in rural America, according to the Federal Point in Time annual count of people without shelter.

Mary Frances Kenyon with the National Alliance to End Homelessness says addiction and homelessness can trap anyone in a vicious spiral, even folks in small towns.

Not a lot of people realize folks are just often one crisis away from experiencing homelessness in rural communities.

Researchers from Georgia State University interviewed more than 3,000 rural people across 10 states who said they had used drugs.

More than half said they had experienced homelessness in the previous six months.

Georgia State Public Health Professor, April Ballard, says their research suggests rural homelessness is much worse than they thought.

We need to be capturing accurate estimates so that we're actually dedicating the right amount of resources.

A small Colorado town is replacing two miles of irrigation ditch with an underground water pipe and over it, a scenic trail that connects to its outdoor attractions.

Alana Newman explains.

In 2022, Monta Vista received a federal grant to revive the town's main street and spark growth in recreation.

Mick Daniel is the director of San Luis Valley Great Outdoors, a local nonprofit.

The community really had the opportunity to put in comment and input and let us know what their hope and vision was for their community.

The group is helping the town build the Lariat Ditch Trail, which will connect downtown to neighborhoods, the high school, and local features.

He says it's boosting the town's appeal for local folks and visitors both.

By making it more livable for the people who live there, tourism will be a very pleasant side effect, not a bad side effect.

I'm Alana Newman.

A South Carolina woman is helping folks devastated by last year's Hurricane Helene, reviving an almost century-old tradition of book delivery.

After the storm clobbered the Appalachian foothills last September, Kirsten Crawford Turner decided to make a difference.

I just saw all the devastation and I thought, "What can I do?"

I cannot rebuild this whole area.

That is how it began, with one box of books on my front porch.

Turner started by asking friends and neighbors for gently used volumes, but now she gets donations from readers across the country.

In the 1930s, women working for the Works Progress Administration rode pack horses through the Eastern Kentucky mountains, bringing books to hard-to-reach places.

Turner hasn't saddled up, but she does pack a U-Haul, and she knows it helps.

I think it gives people a respite from their own story to escape into a different story, so that they can really process and heal from their personal trauma.

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, I'm Roz Brown.

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