Scott and La Tysha Mitchell couldn’t find a house they could afford to buy, so they decided to build one with their bare hands in rural Utah, using a loan from the Department of Agriculture.

They’ve been toiling outside through the snow and 4-degree days, installing flooring and putting up roof trusses for their future home in Utah’s Heber City. But now the government shutdown could jeopardize the hard work they’ve poured into the project, threatening not only to stall construction but also to saddle them with bills from contractors and suppliers who aren’t being paid.

“We would be absolutely devastated — we’ve made so much progress, we’ve had so much momentum,” said Scott Mitchell, 26, who works for his family’s video production company and whose wife works as a spa attendant and receptionist, together earning about $40,000 a year. “It would hurt a lot.”

The Mitchells are working with Self-Help Homes, a Utah-based nonprofit that pays for construction materials and subcontractors on their behalf, with the expectation that the USDA will reimburse that money through the federal loan of about $324,000 that the couple has taken out. But since the partial government shutdown began on Dec. 22, the nonprofit hasn’t received any funds from the USDA and is rapidly running through its reserves. If the shutdown drags on, the Mitchells risk being on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars — and could even risk losing their partly built home.

The Mitchells are among the hundreds of thousands of families in rural America whose homes and prospective homes are being threatened by the closure of the USDA. The agency’s rural affordable housing programs have a low profile inside the USDA even when the government is fully operational. Now they have fallen by the wayside as a skeletal staff has struggled to keep the USDA’s core initiatives afloat since the partial government shutdown began.

Keep reading on NBC News

 

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